Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Allen Hughes will direct a remake of A Bittersweet Life, the 2005 Korean crime drama. The film is being fast tracked by Fox and New Regency. Anthony Peckham is being brought on to do the latest draft of the script.

Hughes, in his first film away from his brother Albert Hughes, just directed Broken City, which New Regency produced and Fox will distribute, and which was financed and produced by Emmett/Furla Films. The film stars Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones. In A Bittersweet Life, the protagonist is an enforcer and manager of a hotel owned by a crime boss. The enforcer is charged with escorting the boss’s young mistress, who might be having an affair. While he’s told to kill both if in fact she is cheating, the enforcer instead beats up her lover while she watches, and makes them promise never to see each other again. The enforcer is by now smitten with the mistress, and it begins to color a series of dangerous moves he makes that put him at odds both with his boss and the boss’s crime rival. The tale becomes an exercise in vengeance as the enforcer goes up against his longtime boss.

Peckham most recently scripted Invictus and Sherlock Holmes, and is working on Yucatan and Deep Sea Cowboys. The scribe also did rewrite work on the superb Book Of Eli, which Hughes directed with his brother. Hughes is repped by WME and Anonymous Content, as is Peckham.