It’s official. Mandate Pictures has announced that Spike Lee has been signed to direct a US remake of the 2003 South Korean film Oldboy (which kicks serious ass). Oldboy won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Now it’ll be watered down for the American market. Mark Protosevich has adapted the screenplay and will co-produce.

Dan Freedman, SVP business affairs, negotiated the deals for Mandate. This is the project that Steven Spielberg and Will Smith were looking to collaborate on back in 2008, with DreamWorks seeking the remake rights at the time. The film originally was set up at Universal before Mandate took over. The story centers on a man who is kidnapped on his daughter’s birthday and held for 15 years in solitary confinement without explanation. He is eventually released and sets out on a path to take revenge on those who destroyed his life. [Deadline]

If any film should be left alone, it’s this. That or at least get David Fincher or Quentin Tarantino to direct it. At least they’d make a decent adaption. The last thing I need in that movie is a lecture on race relations. If Denzel Washington gets cast in this, you know he’s just going to phone this in.

While we’re on the subject of awesome Korean revenge films, I Saw the Devil is another fun one to check out.

What started as a simple remark to promote Spike Lee’s new WWII movie, Miracle at St. Anna, has turned into an even better promotion. Today, Spike Lee gave his response to Clint Eastwood’s suggestion that he should “shut his face.” Spike tells ABC News:

“First of all, the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either. He’s a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn’t personally attack him. And a comment like ‘a guy like that should shut his face’ — come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there.”

“If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I’d like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist,” he said. “I’m not making this up. I know history. I’m a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II.”

Then again, maybe Clint Eastwood misinterpreted his comments.

“I never said he should show one of the other guys holding up the flag as black. I said that African-Americans played a significant part in Iwo Jima,” he said. “For him to insinuate that I’m rewriting history and have one of the four guys with the flag be black … no one said that. It’s just that there’s not one black in either film. And because I know my history, that’s why I made that observation.”

They should just hug and get it over with. Maybe even give each other a fist pound. After all, fist pounding is the new hugging. They can even be cutesy about it. You know how sometimes you see young kids try to teach old white men urban handshakes, but the old guy messes up and they both laugh resulting in sort of shared “moment”? Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood should do that.

[Spike Lee at Cannes 2008. Image via Splash News]

Clint Eastwood fired back at Spike Lee who earlier criticized Clint for not including black soldiers in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, telling the Malcolm X director to “shut his face.” At a press conference at Cannes to promote his own war film, Maracle at St. Anna, Spike commented:

“Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total, and there was not one Negro actor on the screen,” Lee said. “If you reporters had any balls you’d ask him why. There’s no way I know why he did that … But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It’s not like he didn’t know.”

Apparently, one of those reporters had the balls because they asked Clint to which he responded.

“The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn’t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go: ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.” Referring to Lee, he added: “A guy like him should shut his face.”

If you think Clint will stop there, think again.

Defending the racial make-up in his films as historically accurate, Eastwood referred to another of his films, Changeling, which was set in Los Angeles before the city had a large group of African-Americans. “What are you going to do, you going to tell a fuckin’ story about that?” he said. “Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I’m not in that game. I’m playing it the way I read it historically, and that’s the way it is. When I do a movie and it’s 90% black, like Bird, then I use 90% black people.

“He was complaining when I did Bird (the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker). Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that’s why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.”

Based on this evidence, Spike Lee has a good chance of being shot if he ever steps onto Clint Eastwood’s property and it won’t be because he’s black, as he’ll most likely claim, it’ll be because he’s annoying. Oh, hold on a second. I just received a special message from Clint which he wants me to relay to Spike. Clint has cordially invited you to lunch to discuss this issue in depth. Be there at 2 a.m. sharp and bring no witnesses. Er, I mean RSVP. Heh heh heh.

[Clint Eastwood arriving for The Spirit of Independence Awards which he won. Image via Splash News]