Director Spike Lee had wanted Christian Bale to play the tortured villain part in his English-language remake of Chan-wook Park's Korean epic Oldboy but with The Dark Knight Rises actor seemingly reluctant, Lee is turning attention elsewhere. Twitch, the source of all information concerning this remake, say Lee has made an official offer to Colin Firth to play Adrian, one of the last decade's most disturbed villains. He is the guy who imprisons our lead Joe (Dae-su Oh in the Korean original but Josh Brolin in the new remake) for 15 years before setting him free onto the world, but giving him only four days to work out the reason for his imprisonment, or else his daughter will be killed. This leads to one of recent cinema's most memorable climaxes where Firth & Brolin would square off and as much as I hate the idea of remaking such a perfect film, I can't help but be intrigued to see the mastery of acting Brolin and Firth could pull off with this material. And for Firth it would be an unusually dark and villainous role for the actor whose clean cut image from girly romances Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones, Mamma Mia and Love Actually (not an exhaustive list) AND his much loved and Oscar winning portrayal of a favoured former King of England with The King's Speech just last year, would be truly forgotten here. Sure he shook that image up a bit with the spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but this would be like Tom Hanks in Road To Perdition or Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West for the public image twist. A fascinating choice and one that could make the film great. Though we are told not to expect everything from the original film translated over as Mark Protosevichs (I Am Legend) script is said to be more faithful to the 1990s manga series from Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya that the 2003 film was based on. Oldboy is expected to begin filming late summer next year so I imagine Firth has at least until the New Year to decide whether he wants to do the movie and in some ways it may end up being a kick in the teeth for Park Chan-wook as Firth was recently attached to his slow-moving vampire film Stoker and if he were to jump ship and get into bed with Mandate Pictures' remake of his previous work, well that would suck big time for him. Could Firth really do that to Chan-wook? Meanwhile Spike Lee is still trying to find a young woman to play Josh Brolin's daughter in the film. He had offered the role to Rooney Mara but she wasn't interested in doing another dark crime thriller so soon after The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, especially with Sony likely wanting a sequel to that film not too long down the line.