It appears if I want to be in touch with the direction Sylvester Stallone wants to take his post Rambo/Rocky career I may need to brush up on my Charles Bronson flicks as he has already talked about his desire to remake Bronson’s Death Wish and now Dark Horizons is saying Sly is set to star in a remake of The Mechanic and he is eyeing either Ryan Gosling, Ben Foster, Cillian Murphy and Elijah Wood along for the ride.
The original sounds a lot like Luc Besson’s The Professional. The pic was released in 1972 and starred Bronson as a professional hitman who is planning to retire and has found young apprentice (Jan-Michael Vincent), but there is some confusion as to what the young man’s overall goals are. Stallone would, of course, be taking on the Bronson role. There is no word on which one of the young actors mentioned above is in the running for the role of the apprentice.
Pic is set up at MGM and said to be budgeted at $40 million.
IMDb has a remake of The Mechanic listed with a screenplay penned by Shane Salerno (AVP-R). There is no director attached and no mention of Stallone and based on the plot that says it has been “reimagined as a spy thriller” it doesn’t sound like the two projects are related.
