Todd Brown at Twitch has been Johnny-on-the-spot with all news related to this new Oldboy for most of the year, breaking every major story including Spike Lee's attachment back in July, five days before he was officially announced as director. According to Brown, and offer has gone out to Owen and now we're just waiting to see if he accepts the role.
Owen has worked with Lee before, as a smooth-operator heist mastermind in 2006's Inside Man, the biggest commercial hit of Lee's career. In 2005, the Brit was nominated for an Oscar based on his performance in Mike Nichols's Closer. Most American audiences first noticed him as the efficient, professorial assassin in The Bourne Identity, and he's also done rock-solid work in films such as Croupier, Duplicity, Shoot 'Em Up, and Sin City. Most importantly, he starred in Alfonso Cuaron's remarkable Children of Men. Most recently, he picked up a paycheck alongside fellow check-recipients Robert De Niro and Jason Statham in The Killer Elite.
The 2003 Oldboy is directed by Chan wook-Park, adapting the Japanese Manga series by Nobuaki Minegisha and Garon Tsuchiya. The film follows a man who, during a night of carousing, is abducted and imprisoned in a Spartan room for fifteen years. When he is suddenly released, he naturally goes on a tear to find out just who locked him and why. He discovers, however, that the story is just beginning, and he is subject to a convoluted, supremely messed up revenge scheme.
If he accepts the role, Owen would play the man behind the scheme. Firth was an inspired choice, but Owen might just be even more interesting. Both actors are capable of playing a ridiculously intelligent, calculating presence, but Owen could more appropriately convey his icily sinister quality, making him truly intimidating. At the same time, Owen often displays a warm, smirky sense of humor, and that could make the character more than a cackling bad guy.
Spike Lee is directing from a screenplay by Mark Protosevich, whose credits include I Am Legend, Poseidon, and Thor.
