John Woo Wants To Cast A-Listers For LE SAMOURAI And THE KILLER Remake. He Dreams Of Directing A Musical

We know John Woo wants to bring his ambitious project FLYING TIGERS to IMAX and cast Liam Neeson but he still wants to do the 2 projects that, for the past few years, he’s been dying to do..

Hidden in a very lengthy Variety article on how Woo is doing these days as far as filmmaking goes, it says that Woo also wants to cast A-list talents for his English-language remakes of the 1967 Jean-Pierre Melville-directed Le Samourai and Woo’s very own 1989 Hong Kong action classic The Killer.

The original 1967 Frech film Le Samourai is about a perfectionist Assassin who never gets caught. He lives in solitary with no friends. But one night, when he shoots an owner of a nightclub, a eyewitness sees him in the act. Things get more complicated when his employer tries to have him killed and the police is actively tracking him down.

As far as The Killer goes, Woo once told movieline that he wanted to make it into a modern film.
In the original film, Chow Yun Fat was an assassin with a killer instinct like no other.
It’s a bloody tale of loyalty and betrayal. The action sequences are hardcore and the number of dead bad guys are about 120 or so.
3 years ago, the remake plan was to have John H. Lee take on the directing duty. The setting and situation would be in L.A. and they were thinking of casting a Korean star to play Chow Yun Fat’s role. Who knows if that plan is still what Woo has in mind now.

The article gave an interesting fact, at least one I didn’t know about, at one point Woo was in negotiations to direct the adaptation of The Phantom Of The Opera but producers didn’t like Woo’s plans to alter Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s songs. The job eventually went to Joel Schumacher.
Woo said this..“To make a musical is my lifelong dream. It’s hard, though,”
I guess you’ll always be known as an action film director, Woo. Just embrace it. Stick to what you’re good at.