[Update: Shortly after Deadline’s initial report, Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett took to social media to reveal that they’re not remakingFace/Off– they’re making a sequel instead! Check out their posts below, followed by our original story.]
If you’ve seenFace/Off, you know how delightfully unhinged the whole affair is. It’s aJohn Woo-directed action flick where bad guyNicolas Cageand good guyJohn Travoltaswitch faces — and that’s literal — and get into all kinds of intricately choreographed, mayhem-fueled shenanigans. It’s out of its mind. Would you like to see something like this with two contemporary movie stars?
Now, you can. Deadline reports aFace/Offremake is coming from Paramount Pictures, and they’ve selected an appropriately unhinged director:Adam Wingard, who’s got the forthcoming and hotly anticipatedGodzilla vs. Kongto stomp all over our collective faces. Wingard will write the film alongside his regular collaboratorSimon Barrett, and producers includeNeal Moritz(theFast and the Furiousfranchise) andDavid Permut(Hacksaw Ridge). Plot details and cast members are as of yet undivulged, but sources report it will be a total reboot with a totally new cast.
Wingard and Barrett have a lot of genre-shifting, wild ride films to their credit, including the horror/social comedyYou’re Nextand the “what ifJohn CarpenterdirectedThe Terminatorlike a fish out of water high school comedy” shenanigans ofThe Guest. But if Wingard really wants hisFace/Offremake to go off the chain in a way that would honor but expand upon the original, I would humbly suggest he take a cue from hisDeath NoteNetflix adaptation.
That movie is not “good.” But it is “wild,” and it is rife with imagination, a bonkers sense of style, a perversely macabre sense of humor, and unorthodoxly staged action-horror sequences — not to mention a narrative focus on the sliding ambiguities of identity. If Wingard can weaponize that aesthetic in service of a stronger script, and get himself some dope cast members to boot, thisFace/Offmight rock our faces off all over again.
