Remake Insanity, Part 2: "Versus"

by Chris MaGee

For me the the one thing that has defined the films of Ryuhei Kitamura besides his love of wild action is his distaste of Japanese films and his love of Hollywood ones, so while this news may come as a shock to his fans it doesn't really come as a shock to me: Kitamura has announced that he will be helming a U.S. remake of his most famous film "Versus".

Now before you faint dead away think about it: "Versus" was fairly low-budget, so I can only imagine that Kitamura is dying to get some major Hollywood money behind this remake because in his estimation he's said that, “The US Versus will be insane!”and honestly I don't doubt that. My two concerns though are this... I'm surprised that Kitamura is so anxious to head back to Hollywood after having gone through such a shit storm (excuse the language) with the release of "Midnight Meat Train"; and, and this is my biggest concern, who are they going to get to play Prisoner KSC2-303? While I'm not much of a fan of Kitamura I am a huge fan of Tak Sakaguchi, so the thought of another action star filling his shoes leaves me a little cold.

Thanks to Nippon Cinema for the heads up on this one.