DEATH WISH Remake Starring Bruce Willis Gets New Life With Pair of New Directors

A remake of the 1974 film Death Wish has been brewing for years, with The Grey director Joe Carnahan attached at one point before bailing on the project over disagreements with the studio when they wanted Bruce Willis to star. But after cycling through another director a few years ago, Deadline reports that Paramount and MGM have now hired Big Bad Wolves directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado as the latest pair to try to bring this project to life.

Willis is reportedly still attached to star, and Carnahan's screenplay — which has since been rewritten by Nightcrawler's Dan Gilroy and Justified's Graham Yost — is what they're working with now. It reportedly sticks pretty close to the original 1972 novel, which follows an accountant who becomes a vigilante after his wife and daughter are attacked by muggers in New York City. Charles Bronson starred in the original movie adaptation and its four sequels.

Here's the thing, though: there basically already was a remake of Death Wish, and it's called Death Sentence*. James Wan directed it back in 2007, and it starred Kevin Bacon in a role extremely similar to the one Bronson played in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. It's a stylish and gritty exploration of the same sort of themes, and even though I haven't seen Big Bad Wolves, I can't imagine a modern update tackling that same general topic any better than Wan did a few years ago.

What do you think?

*The Death Sentence book is a sequel to the original Death Wish novel, so it's technically not a remake.