Better Luck Tomorrow director Justin Lin is currently directing his first studio film, Annapolis, for Disney. It’s a remake of the violent Korean drama Oldboy. After the success of Better Luck Tomorrow, Lin was offered a number of projects, which he turned down.
But over dinner with a Universal executive, Lin was pitched the idea of remaking Oldboy, which, at the time, he knew nothing about.
“His pitch was very simple,” Lin remembers. “He basically said this was the story of a guy who gets kidnapped and held captive and he and the audience doesn’t know why. Fifteen years later, he’s released and he and the audience still don’t know why. So the guy sets out to get revenge on whoever did this to him.”
Lin was intrigued and screened the film the very next day.
“I loved the themes and the story,” Lin says. “I wasn’t interested in remaking the film so much as taking [the concept] and exploring that.”
Lin attributes Hollywood’s recent fascination with Asian cinema to the changes in technology that have allowed filmmakers from other countries to compete with American studio films as well as Hollywood’s constant need for fresh voices and stories.
“Since Sundance, I’ve been offered a lot of remakes,” Lin says, “not just Asian films, but from all over — Europe, Argentina. Development takes years and years so taking a film that already exists and [adapting it] helps truncate that development time.”