In a blatant display of sibling rivalry, Tony Scott announced that he TOO can do a remake, choosing to take on the Sam Peckinpah classic western The Wild Bunch. Why? Why would you do this? What is there to gain? Peckinpah's original is a near-perfect film and I just don't see what Scott thinks he can add or do better here. Maybe if he wanted to take the structure of the story and transport it into some sort of radically different setting, ala Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, or Sons Of Katie Elder and Four Brothers, then maybe that could be interesting. Instead this feels like a studio flipping through their archives looking for a semi-recognizable property to resuscitate and attaching a well known and ill-fitting director to give it some steam.
Interestingly, the same story from Deadline notes that Scott is developing a based-on-a-true-story movie about the Hells Angels embroiled in a gang war, and that he wants Jeff Bridges to play the lead of Sonny Barger. Now THAT'S something I can get behind. The Dude as a motorcycle badass? Hells (Angels) yes! Besides, that feels like a project that Scott INFINITELY better suited to. I can already see his bleached-out, vibrating camera whipping around a group of mangy bikers tooling up the coast...
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