Takashi Miike is held in great esteem by fans of Asian cinema, and with good reason. He’s incredibly prolific, imaginative, and shocking. He’s also never made an English language film, which isn’t that surprising. Why would he? He’s acheived massive success in his own country, and look at it this way – loads of American directors have never made a Japanese-language film.
That said, Deadline have announced that he and Joel Silver will work together to make Miike’s English-language debut The Outsider, a script that has been doing the rounds for some time, having been purchased by Warner Bros. in 2011. Tom Hardy has been pegged to star, surely continuing his recent streak of great movie choices (This Means War notwithstanding). The official blurb says that it’s about “a World War II POW who is broken out of the camp by the Yakuza and is then forced to work for the crime syndicate”.
We reported on this story before, with Daniel Espinosa in the director’s seat and Michael Fassbender to star, but that deal fell through. Such is the whims of Hollywood, and the perils of living in the world that Heraclitus felt compelled to describe thusly: “All is flux; nothing is stationary.”
Tom Hardy will presumably take on Fassbender’s role, which is an intriguingly musculuar replacement. There’s scant few actual plot details but what we do know is that it’s independently financed, and will begin shooting in Japan next year.
There’s something of an Asian cinematic invasion going on right now, with the recent release of Chan-wook Park’s English-language debut Stoker, the incoming remakes of that same director’s Vengeance trilogy, and Snowpiercer by Bong Joon Ho on the way – what will we see next? Will we finally get that English-language remake of The Happiness of the Katakuris ?
As long as they follow the immortal words of Heraclitus, all will be fine on the production of The Outsider: “(A) good (film) is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop (a) good (film).”