Adam Wingard to direct Face/Off remake... or at least it'll be someone with Adam Wingard's face

By Sam Barsanti | February 11, 2021 | 11:24pm

Aux Features Adam Wingard

Adam Wingard to direct Face/Off remake... or at least it'll be someone with Adam Wingard's face

Adam Wingard (or someone wearing his face) Photo: Alli Harvey/Getty Images for Fast Company

Back in 2019, we reported on the worrying news that Paramount was putting together a remake of John Woo’s 1997 action movie Face/Off—a film that transcends reductive labels like “good” or “bad” and simply “is.” Remaking Face/Off didn’t seem like it was automatically a terrible idea, but it did seem like a pointless idea, since the original film is such a perfect expression of exactly the kind of bonkers-ass movie Woo had evidently set out to make, but Hollywood’s going to do what Hollywood’s going to do, and the thing it’s doing now is a remake of Face/Off.

Now, thanks to Deadline, we know who’s actually doing it this time: Adam Wingard, director of Godzilla Vs. Kong, will be directing the new Face/Off, with him and regular writing partner Simon Barrett putting together the new script. Details are slim, including anything about casting, but that’s going to be a very important part of whether or not this project ends up being remotely as successful (or “successful”) as the original film. That one starred John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, with both of them dialing it up to 11, as an FBI agent named Sean Archer and a terrorist bomber named Castor Troy. In an attempt to get information on Troy’s latest evil scheme, Archer undergoes high-tech face-replacement surgery and goes undercover as Troy at a ridiculous sci-fi prison, but when Troy finds out about it, he goes through the same face surgery so he can make everyone think he’s Archer. It’s great and stupid and great.

Paramount is hopefully planning to put some money into this and get a similarly famous cast, because part of the fun of the original movie was watching two recognizable actors having to play each other. That’ll be less of a gag if they’re just a couple of newcomers or if they’re too boring. Then there’s also the possibility that Wingard and Paramount will try to—gasp!—play this like some kind of serious movie, which would be truly shocking.

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