Will Smith in Old Boy, Spielberg says 'Not a remake'

Martin Anderson

Steven Spielberg says his Will Smith feature returns to the manga roots rather than the 2003 Korean adaptation...

Film School Rejects report that Steven Spielberg's 2010 Old Boy (that's the current IMDB listing for the title of the project, rather than the widely reported Oldboy) will return to the graphic source manga by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya. Will Smith has confirmed that he is taking the lead role.

Smith told FSR after a red-carpet premiere of Seven Pounds that Spielberg's film will not be a remake of Chan-wook Park's 2003 Korean adaptation. When asked what direction the film would take, Smith said:

"We’re looking at that right now. Not the film though, it’s the original source material. There’s the original comics of ‘Oldboy’ that they made the first film from. And that’s what we’re working from, not an adaptation of the film…"

The Dreamworks/Universal project is set to re-unite Smith with I Am Legend (and incidentally, Thor) scribe Mark Protosevich.

FSR