Elizabeth Olsen recently sat down with UK magazine Empire and the discussion about the Spike Lee adaptation of Oldboy came up. With the work being based on the Park Chan-wook film, and people not terribly thrilled about it being remade in the US market, she offers up a few insights that show why it won’t be a straight on retelling.
“It’s not trying to redo the film – it’s coming at it from a different view,” Olsen says. “As well as focusing on the primary source of the Korean film, for our film there’s also the Japanese Manga, so we’re using the primary source of the illustrated novel, really.”
“It’s going to be a different story,” Olsen says, “just because, one, it takes place in a non-descript city in America, and, two, it’s ten years later, so technology is different. It’s practicalities that have had to change.”
With the original manga, released by Dark Horse Comics in the US, done by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi and being used as source material as well, it’ll definitely paint a very different picture.
Plot concept: It focuses on a man named Joe who is captured and imprisoned in a hotel room for over two decades with no understanding as to why. When he is suddenly released, he’s told that he has just four days to determine the reason for his imprisonment.
