Jason Statham may pull Killer’s Game out of development hell.
These days it’s commonplace for film loving folks to despair when they read that a beloved film is due to be remade. This usually leads to an end product that’s a to be a bitter disappointment, but it could be that Hollywood may be changing its tactics and looking now towards scripts that have been languishing in development hell for instead. This trend seems to be gaining momentum with Will Smith soon to star in the seemingly forever in development hell (over 20 years) Gemini Man.
The latest script to be potentially given the green light is Killers Game, which is set to be directed by D.J. Caruso, who most recently helmed xXx: The Return of Xander Cage which whilst not a critical success, managed to gross over $346 million at the global box-office from an $85 million budget.
Reports are now emerging that Jason Statham is in talks to take on the lead, that over the years has been attached to names such as Michael Keaton and Wesley Snipes.
The script in (various forms) has been doing the rounds for around two decades now and is based upon the Jay Bonansinga novel which was published in 1997. It tells the story of hitman Joe Flood, who is diagnosed with a terminal condition and takes out a contract on his own life rather than suffer a long and painful death. Unfortunately, the diagnosis turns out to be wrong and he then has to take on his former colleagues who are now trying to kill him and pick up the cash for the hit. The movie rights for the book were bought upon the book’s release, but it has remained in the development wasteland ever since. Previous directors linked to the project have included John Woo, Renny Harlin and Alex Proyas, who for various reasons, have been unable to get the project into production.
Statham has a busy schedule ahead of him with the upcoming prehistoric shark movie Meg coming out soon, as well as the proposed Fast and Furious spin off which also features Dwayne Johnson’s character of Hobbs, as well as Sylvester Stallone recently teasing the return of The Expendables franchise via his Instagram account.