It may only have arrived to average box office back in its native Japan in 2007 – and played to limited/festival audiences here and in the US, but Sony is clearly thinking that comedy action pic Big Man Japan is ripe for a remake.
In fact, that's likely to be part of the appeal – mining an idea that will be largely fresh to most audiences outside of Japan. The movie, cooked up by comic actor/director Hitoshi Matsumoto, finds him as a down-on-his-luck wrestler who discovers his true calling in fighting giant aliens, Gojira-style. His special power? When he receives a big electrical jolt, he grows to an enormous size, allowing him to lay the smack down on the evil invaders.
Sony is partnering with reliable blockbuster provider Neil H Moritz (the man who has shepherded the likes of the **Fast & Furious **franchise and I Am Legend, among many others to the screen) for the new English language version. The worrying part? Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi – who pumped out the likes of last year’s Clash of the Titans and 2005’s Aeon Flux – are the first names attached to the script.
"With an ordinary remake, you just turn over everything to someone else and do nothing yourself, but this time I'll take part in the remake in some form or other, so I'd like to make something interesting and fun and different from Big Man Japan," Matsumoto said in a press release picked up by Variety. Wait and see how he reacts when he learns who the writers are and what they’ve worked on…