Though Johnny Cash is usually more likely to be found on a film's soundtrack than up onscreen, he did notch up a few credits before deciding that music was the world that better suited him. One of his better-known roles was as crazed criminal Johnny Cabot in 1961's Five Minutes To Live, and now someone else will be taking it on as Jan de Bont has been hired to remake the movie.
De Bont hasn’t stepped behind the camera since 2003’s less-than-successful action sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life, and while he’s had a few possible projects pop up here and there, we were starting to wonder whether he might be spending the rest of his career in director jail.
But producers Joseph and Jack Nasser have now decided he’s the man to make the new version of Five Minutes, for which Transparency’s Raul Inglis has written a fresh script. It’ll follow the same basic plot though – two men hold a bank manager’s wife hostage until he agrees to give them a certain amount of money. One of the villains stays with the wife, and one confronts the manager at work, threatening that unless he calls his partner every five minutes, the man's other half will die. Trouble is, the manager had already been planning to run away to Vegas with his mistress, and might just see the chance for his wife to die as one he’s willing to endorse...
There’s no word on when it’ll kick off shooting, but the producers and de Bont are getting started with casting soon. Our vote? Put Joaquin Phoenix in the role Cash played for pure in-joke purposes.