Park Chan-wook Is Back To Work!

Fifteen full years ago (!!!) in 2009 I posted about Oldboy director Park Chan-wook following up his vampire film Thirst with an NYC-set adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s novel The Ax from 1997. The book is about:

"... a middle aged, middle class salaryman loses his job after a downsizing, and after spending the following two years downsizing his lifestyle, he decides to overcome competition in his own personal way: chopping down anyone who gets in the way of his path back into fiscal solvency."

Obviously that movie didn't happen then -- he did come to America but he made the great and underrated Stoker with Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska instead. But it looks like he's come back to the project -- The Film Stage has word that he is beginning shooting his adaptation this week (!!!) and it's to be called No Other Choice now. And that is the teaser poster up top too! The film will be shot in his homeland of South Korea now though, and it will star our long-standing crush Byung-hun Lee!

I've long been surprised that the two of them haven't worked together since Joint Security Area way back in the year 2000 before either one of them were really anybody... 

... so this is an overdue reunion we're thrilled to see finally happen. Also announced in the cast are actors Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won, and Yoo Yeon-seok -- Sung-min was in The Good, The Bad, and the Weird with Byung-hun in 2008, Yeom Hye-ran was in Bong Joon-ho's fantastic movie Memories of Murder, and Yoo Yeon-seok played the young version of the villain in Oldboy (that's him then and now below) but other than that I'm not super familiar with any of the cast. Not that I have anything but immense trust in Master Park! (As long as Robert Downey Jr. is nowhere to be seen anyway.)