Statham Negotiates ‘Death Race’

There are reasons Jason Statham has fans, myself included, those reasons are Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. However, since he got a little bigger on the scene he has found himself in relatively crap roles. I will admit I actually enjoy both Transporter movies and I loved The Italian Job remake, but those weren’t like the early days where Statham played Turkish in Snatch. I mean, come on, tell me that wasn’t one hell of a performance!

So, with that said, we now learn that Statham is in talks to star in a remake of Death Race for Paul W.S. Andersona and Universal Pictures. I’ll be honest, I won’t mind seeing it, but the last Statham starrer, Crank, wasn’t even screened for critics here in Seattle, so who knows if this one will be?

The film is a remake of Roger Corman’s classic Death Race 2000 which starred David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone and told the story of a dystopian future America in which the president presides over an ultraviolent road race from New York to Los Angeles. One of the ways that drivers score points is by mowing down innocent bystanders using their heavily armed cars.

Really, this sounds entertaining and since we get Anderson directing, which is like one step above Uwe Boll, it should be horrible. The weird news that I had never heard about was that this was originally set up at Paramount as a starring vehicle for Tom Cruise? Cruise and Wagner as still producing the pic, but I can’t see Tom Cruise running over pedestrians in an ultraviolent race across the country. However, I wouldn’t mind seeing how that would have turned out.

The film is currently set for a late summer or early fall production start.