English-Language Remake Of The Raid Loses Director And Studio

It’s been an awful long time since we learned of any update regarding Screen Gems’ English-language remake of The Raid – so long, in fact, that we’re beginning to question if it’s still a thing. After almost a year of radio silence, The Tracking Board has unearthed a report that suggests both director Patrick Hughes (Expendables 3) and the studio have pulled out of the project, posing serious question marks over its journey to the silver screen.

Up until now, Taylor Kitsch and The Purge: Anarchy star Frank Grillo had been attached to star, and while the outlet doesn’t specify the exact reason for the fallout, it’s clear that continual production delays hampered early signs of progress. Now, it’s understood that Hughes will move onto pastures anew; specifically, boat race thriller The Storm Warning, leaving production company XYZ Films as the only party tethered to The Raid remake at the time of writing.

Details are, as you would imagine, thin on the ground. With no official statement from either Screen Gems or XYZ, the jury’s still out on who will take the helm from this point forth – if the project isn’t outright cancelled, that is. Indeed, prior to today’s disheartening nugget, action star Frank Grillo previously hinted that The Raid would leap in front of the cameras by early 2015, jump-starting a production that was in no way intending to simply mirror the style of Gareth Evans’ hit original.

A few months ago, Grillo revealed to /Film that:

“They weren’t going to remake The Raid, which is a beloved film, if they couldn’t find a guy who could find the physical stuff and they hadn’t been able to do that. So I think we’re going to come back around after I’m done with the second 10 [episodes of Kingdom]. We’re going to come back around to that.”

Evans’ Indonesian action thriller was something of a cult classic when it released in 2011, spawning an equally brilliant sequel three years later. Such success naturally begs the question as to why Screen Gems would want to remake the film in the first place – 2013’s Oldboy remake didn’t exactly set the world alight, after all – though it remains to be seen where XYZ Films will take the English-language version of The Raid from here.