Hollywood directors putting their English-language remake stamp on popular foreign fare is hardly something new but with Paul Haggis delivering a good re-do of the French thriller Anything for Her via the Russell Crowe starrer
The Next Three Days and Matt Reeves inexplicably making his
Let Me In the superior adaptation to the Swedish original Let The Right One In in some fans and critics eyes (not mine), and with David Fincher looking like he might knock his take on
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo completely out of the ballpark this Christmas - are we a little less quick to slag off subtitled movies do-overs. Probably not but we're always game for a good movie and if someone as talented as
Ben Affleck thinks he can turn Harlan Coben's novel
Tell No One, already turned into an exhilarating thriller via a
Guillame Canet directed French thriller, into a Hollywood vehicle that will entertain and indeed thrill us, then we won't stand in his way.
Deadline says that Affleck has attached himself to a joint Warner Bros. (releasing domestically) and Universal Pictures (overseas) remake of Tell No One, based on acclaimed author Harlan Coben's best-selling novel about;
... a pediatrician who is out one night frolicking by a lake with his wife when she suddenly vanishes and he is severely beaten when he tries to find her. When she turns up murdered, he is prime suspect. Thats until shes declared a victim of a caught serial killer. Years later, bodies turn up in the same spot and the nightmare is repeated, the pediatrician again under suspicion. Right around that time, hes given evidence that his wife wasnt dead at all.
Back in 2007 when the French movie was making waves in the U.S. and the U.K.
we called it "slick and precise and the ease with which he builds suspense and weaves a dense plot around strong, well-defined characters is to be commended." Funny that as we said similar things about Affleck's last film
The Town. Luc Bessons EuropaCorp who produced the French original are also involved.
Chris Terrio - the scribe who has also penned Affleck's next film, the
Middle East hostage thriller Argo, has been tasked with the writing duties and Cohen is close to finally seeing a Hollywood version of his novel made which was first setup at Sony in 2002. Back then it was for future Star Trek and Transformers scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to adapt but they found an adaptation tough and eventually the French film was born. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1_n-D8Idg How much we need Affleck to remake the movie is a fair question but damned if he isn't on a role right now and we would follow him to any project.