Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance Remake in the Works

Well sonuvabitch. So the Oldboy remake we were all so worried about? The one Will Smith was trying to produce and star in ? Dead in the water. Awesome. So what happens now? Warner Brothers slips in and buys the rights to Park Chan-Wook's first film in the classic Vengeance Trilogy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Brian Tucker has been tapped to pen the script. Tucker's only film credit is as one of the writer's in next year's Broken City.

Sympathy is the story of a deaf/mute man who plans to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy CEO in order to ransom enough money to pay for his sister's kidney transplant. Aided by his radical, extremist girlfriend, the plan goes deadly almost immediately.

While I don't consider Sympathy nearly as great as Oldboy, I do still hold it in high regard, certainly on par with the third installment of the trilogy, Lady Vengeance. If remade, I can see a sort of John Q element to the story that might be more appealing to American audiences. So where Oldboy was a disaster, I can see this one definitely coming to fruition. I'm not happy about it, but here's hoping they don't screw it up too badly.