Keanu Reeves heads up cast of Hollywood "47 Ronin" re-imagining?

by Chris MaGee

Okay, this might not be brand new news for some of you out there, but throw a guy a bone here. It would be easy to understand that news of Keanu Reeves heading up the cast of a Hollywood re-imagining of the classic "Chushingura", or "The Loval 47 Ronin" would push a Japanese film lover right over the edge. I know I'd heard tell of this project somewhere before, but honestly it was only after reading Andrew Mack's recent report at Twitch about Universal's "Gladiator'-esque, '300'-like big action movie with samurai and ninja" remake of what many scholars call Japan's national epic that the memory of it got brought back into my consciousness. Frankly, I think I just blocked it out like some kind of traumatic disaster or something.

Okay, so Universal has plans to remake "The Loyal 47 Ronin" with Keanu Reeves in the lead. Now they have announced that they've deputized commercial filmmaker Carl Rinsch to take the reins of this big budget blasphemy... I mean film, big budget film, although they've yet to announce when, where (and why) filming will take place.

Wasn't it enough that we were going to get Keanu playing Spike Siegel in the live-action version of Shinichiro Watanabe's "Cowboy Bebop"? Now "The 47 Ronin"? What next? Maybe they can remake Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story" but make it more contemporary, more appealing for present day American audiences. Put some wire-fu in there and get Keanu to deliver the famous line "Isn't life disappointing... Dude?"