John Woo To Get Hard Boiled Once Again
The babies are bombs! The bombs are babies! Word on the street is that John Woo is gearing up for a sequel to his seminal Heroic Bloodshed film, Hard Boiled. The crazy thing is that it’s also apparently going to be an adaptation of Stranglehold, the video game sequel to Hard Boiled. The game was developed with the involvement of both John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat, and is just about as close as most of us will get to murdering thousands of people while leaping through the air head first firing two pistols at the same time.
The script for the sequel is being developed by Jeremy Passmore and Andre Fabrizio who are also working on the aforementioned Missing in Action remake and another for Red Dawn. These guys seem to be the sole perpetrators behind the upcoming 80’s action tsunami, a Herculean feat to be sure. Hopefully they’re up to the task.
If John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat are fully invested in this project and aren’t handing off any more duties than the scripting, then this may be the best news of the year. My only concern is if they decide to stick to the plot of the video game to the detriment of the movie itself. All that aside, could Stranglehold be the video game that finally turns the tide for movie adaptations of the medium?
Comments (5)
I can dig it, Hard Boiled isn’t exactly high liturature to begin with, a video game adaptation would probably be faithful. My only concern is tha tchow Yun-Fatt might be too old for this shit.
Posted by TheMovieVampire on March 9th, 2009This is pretty cool news. I love the original Hard Boiled as well as The Killer and A Better Tomorrow 1 (haven’t seen the sequels). Woo crashed and burned as soon as he started making films in the states although i did like Hard Target. Hey Sean have you heard anything about that 2 part movie Red Cliff that he shot back on his own turf??
Posted by cronenfly on March 9th, 2009TheMovieVampire, you’re never too old to shoot a gun. Although Chinese people are not immortal like you vampires, we tend to age more gracefully. My 77-year-old dad could beat up any punk off the street.
cronenfly, I believe the first part of Red Cliff is now available on DVD in Hong Kong. I recently picked up the 2nd part as a bootleg. I’ve only watched 5 minutes or so. I’ve gotten tired of these epic battle films.
Last year, I watched the first part without English subtitles. It was mildly interesting without being able to understand what was going on. The visuals didn’t seem that spectacular, but I was watching a “filmed off a theatre screen” version.
Posted by Reed Farrington on March 10th, 2009@Reed. How can you tire of epic battle?
KAPLAH!
Posted by dougnagy on March 11th, 2009Doug, nice to hear from you! (For those of you who can’t read Klingon, Doug was wishing me success. He spelled it wrong, though. It’s back to Klingon camp for Doug.) BTW, Doug, I really love your performance in Colore Non Vedenti. I’m glad you didn’t use any of my acting advice. Ha ha.
I watched a bit more of Red Cliff Part II. The framing of the camera shots is really well done. The scene transitions are somewhat “flamboyant,” but I like them.
Posted by Reed Farrington on March 11th, 2009Leave a Reply