Josh Brolin recently sat down with Collider to discuss his starring role in Spike Lee‘s heavily anticipated remake of Oldboy.
While fans of the Chan-Wook Park original may hold a hefty amount of resentment towards the upcoming film, Josh Brolin — who’s taken on the leading role — had nothing but good things to say about his director, cinematographer, co-star, and overall experience. He’s confident the new film will easily match the cult classic developed by Park.
“I fell in love with New Orleans,” Brolin said. “I absolutely feel deeply in love with Spike [Lee], I feel in love with Sean Bobbitt, the DP, who did Shame and Hunger, fell in love with him. Fell in love with Lizzie Olsen, thought ultimately that if it’s edited together—which I’ll be a part of later—if it’s edited together even close to what the experience was, it will be really good. It should be really good.”
Josh Brolin enthusiastically went on to explain how Spike Lee’s take on the material is completely different from Chan-Wook Park’s version of Oldboy. He also heavily emphasized the film was in no way watered down.
“With Oldboy, look, it’s Spike Lee, its myself, there’s the DP Sean Bobbitt, who’s amazing, man, and me talking to Chan-wook Park and saying, ‘Do you mind if we do this?’ and his only request was just don’t do the same movie and it’s like, no we’re not interested in that,” Brolin said. “Structurally, as a scaffolding, it’s the same movie, but what we do with it is very different. It looks very different.”
Oldboy, based on the manga by the same name, follows a man as he is imprisoned for seemingly no reason in an anonymous motel room for over a decade. After he is released just as seamlessly, he begins a quest for vengeance and answers. Josh Brolin went on to describe how he and Spike Lee went on to film the imprisonment scenes with equal amounts of delight.
“We did eight minute to eleven minute long takes [in the motel room] where he would just let me go and do whatever,” he said. “I’d be sitting there naked in the room and he would say, ‘You’ve been in the room thirteen years: go.’ And I would do eight minutes on that and whatever would come up. Some of it was really stupid and unusable. Some of it was really fun and interesting.”
Oldboy has just finished filming and is not set for a release until October 2013. It will star Josh Brolin along with Elizabeth Olsen, Samuel L. Jackson and Sharlto Copley. Chan-Wook Park’s Lady Vengeance — which is seen as the last part of a vengeance trilogy including Oldboy — has also recently been picked up and will star Charlize Theron. We’ll be sure to be on the look out for any new info regarding both.
