Paramount Developing A ‘Face/Off’ Reboot
Paramount Pictures has put into development a remake of John Woo’s action movie ‘Face/Off’ it has been announced…
For those of you that haven’t seen this particularly bonkers action flick, the original starred John Travolta as FBI agent Sean Archer and Nicolas Cage as sociopathic criminal Castor Troy, who murdered his son. When Archer catches Troy at LAX, he reveals he knows the location of a bomb, which is set by his associate Pollux, to go off in the next few days… But, oops… Troy gets put in a coma before Archer can question him. So Archer hits on the idea of using a highly experimental face transplant procedure to switch faces with Troy and go undercover to the prison holding Pollux, to get him to tell him the location of the bomb. Which would have been fine, if Troy hadn’t woken up from his coma, and discovered his face missing… Rather miffed at the turn of events, Troy forces the medical team to transplant Archer’s face, which they had “on ice” waiting for his return, onto his, before killing the team, so no one knowns they have swapped faces. With Archer (wearing Troy’s face) now stuck in prison, Troy (wearing Archer’s face) takes over his life, forcing Archer to break out and stop him.
According to Deadline, who broke the news, the script for this new version of the movie comes from Oren Uziel, writer of ’22 Jump Street’, ‘The Cloverfield Paradox’ and ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’. Neal Moritz (‘Fast & Furious’ franchise, ‘The Boys’, ‘Preacher’) is set to produce, with David Permut (‘Hacksaw Ridge’, the original ‘Face/Off’) as exec producer.
The key to getting this to work is the casting. It’s a great opportunity to cast against type, giving the opportunity for an actor you’d never dream of being a villain the chance to chew some scenery, whilst the actor who would usually have the villain role gets to be a hero. So… Tom Hanks vs John Malkovich? Keanu Reeves vs Danny Trejo? Or alternatively, you could just cast two well known friends… Matt Damon vs Ben Affleck maybe? We’ll have to see what they come up with!
The ‘Face/Off’ remake/reboot is still only in development at the moment, so may come to nothing, but we’ll let you know if it goes anywhere.
