Is John Travolta the key to getting two long-brewing projects off the ground? Maybe? At the very least he’s taking a good look, and we’ll let you guess which one we’d rather not see ever get made. But let’s start on the football field first.
“I’m…considering doing a US film about the football coach Vince Lombardi, who coached my dad [Salvatore Travolta] before he went professional,” Travolta told ScreenDaily at the Zurich Film Festival. “I would play Vince Lomabrdi.” As pigskin fanatics already known, Lombardi was a legendary coach who was the force behind the Green Bay Packers, leading them to their first two Super Bowls. But what you may not know (or remember) is that two years ago Robert De Niro was taking a look at the role, for a movie which at the time was aiming to be completed for release between the 2012 AFC and NFC championship games. Guess that didn’t happen. The movie would chronicle those Packer years, and we guess Travolta would be…at least interesting in the part. And hopefully he does take it if only to stop him from “entertaining the possibility of doing” a 3D remake of "The Killer." We’re not kidding.
People have been trying to remake John Woo‘s classic for years now, and just over a year ago the project was back on with little-known South Korean helmer John H. Lee set to direct from a script by Josh Campbell (never heard of him) with Jung Woo-sung ("Reign of Assassins," "The Good The Bad The Weird") in the lead role. The plan was to transplant the story — about an assassin who takes on one last job to raise money for eye operation for a singer he accidentally injures during a shootout — to Los Angeles, but clearly nothing has happened yet. Woo himself is producing the remake, and having worked with Travolta before on "Face/Off" and "Broken Arrow," we suppose the relationship is there. No word yet on which role Travolta will take, but we presume he’ll be the detective tracking the assassin down.
So, one or the other? Or none at all? Which of these do you want to see Travolta do? Will you watch a 3D remake of "The Killer"? If you still don’t get what people are upset about, just rent the original and then have your mind blown by how much impact it had on action movies since (basically any scene that has multiple dudes pointing guns at each other owes a nod to this movie).