Ex-Wrestler and former Bond girl team for MONA LISA remake?!?

By Matt Holmes /

I'm much more familiar with Bob Hoskins' other dark, disturbing and paranoid mid 80's British thriller The Long Good Friday than I am with Mona Lisa, a movie which Variety have announced is to receive an American remake from Handmade Films over two decades since it originally screened. The movie starred Hoskins, then a fresh faced newcomer on the film scene as a guy who lands a job as a chaffuer for a high class escort, played by Cathy Tyson. At first they hate each other and what they both represent but of course over the duration of the film they begin to form a close bond and fall in love. Hoskins agrees to help Tyson find her friend who still works at the dangerous corner of Soho prostitution. Neil Jordan made it, a man who went on to make The Crying Game, The End of the Affair and Interview with the Vampire, so I have no doubt it's good and I frikkin love Hoskins in The Long Good Friday (also being remade right now). The remake which will begin lensing in New York this July has landed the much in demand Mickey Rourke to play the Hoskins part (perfection, he knows cynical world weariness!) and Eva Green is in advanced talks to play the high class escort (PERFECTON!). Larry Clark, director of the Brad Renfro movie Bully has written and will direct. I very much like the partnership of Green and Rourke, the concept that brings them together here should work magnificently. Though why remake Mona Lisa, why not do a movie "in the spirit of" instead?

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