Producers to base new film on Ryu Murakami’s original 1997 novel rather than Takashi Miike’s 2009 film, with Australian director Richard Gray at the helm
Hollywood’s latest proposal to remake a cult Asian horror film could seeTakashi Miike’s infamous Audition reimagined for US audiences, reports Deadline.
Producers of the new project say they will base their film on the 1997 source novel by Japanese author Ryu Murakami, which was translated into English in 2009, rather than Miike’s adaptation. Both versions tell the tale of a middle-aged man who enters a world of pain after mounting a series of auditions for a new (much younger) partner.
Reviewing the English translation of Audition for the Guardian in 2009, Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh wrote: “It is in the third act that Murakami’s writing is at its strongest, in what is a genuinely shocking and grisly climax. Those who know his previous novels, particularly Piercing and Almost Transparent Blue, will be aware that his strongest suit as a writer is how he portrays tripped-out, hallucinogenic sex and violence, and both the sex between Aoyama and Yamasaki in the hotel room and the subsequent violent denouement are mesmerising and compelling.”
Deadline says the remake will focus on a man named Sam Davis, who lives alone with his son following the death of his wife seven years prior, and is convinced by a film-maker friend to stage fake auditions. He meets a ballerina with a mysterious past and finds himself falling in love.
Miike’s 1999 film is known as one of the most excruciating examples of Asian horror. Hollywood has had mixed success in mounting English-language versions of such films in recent years. In 2013 Spike Lee delivered a poorly received remake of Oldboy, another harrowing cult thriller originally directed by South Korea’s Park Chan-wook.
Richard Gray will direct the US remake from his own screenplay. The Melbourne-born film-maker is best known for the 2013 time-travel thrillerMine Games.
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