Director John Woo made a name for himself with Hong Kong action epics like The Killer and Hard Boiled. The main theme of these films were the extensive brutal world of underground mobsters. His biggest successes in Hollywood was Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2 while films like Windtalkers and Paycheck failed to find audiences. Woo had been focusing on another WWII film and released a two part Chinese epic titled Red Cliff. Deadline reports Woo is set to direct Day of The Beast which is a remake of the 1963 Japanese crime thriller Youth of The Beast from legendary director Seijun Suzuki. If successful, I wouldn't be shocked to see this become a franchise as Suzuki had a rather large amount of films set in the Yakuza genre.
A western outsider with a grim past as he becomes embroiled in a global turf war between a vicious new breed of Yakuza and old school Cold War Russian mobsters. It’s an action-packed saga of loyalty, revenge and redemption which erupts in the heart of Tokyo.
Seemingly the Japanese hit Outrage has sparked this new interest in the Yakuza sub-genre. Fox's comic book film The Wolverine is expected to explore samurai culture along with the underbelly of the criminal culture of the Yakuza. Universal Pictures has set Gavin O'Connor (Warrior) to write/direct a thriller Yakzua which will also explore this criminal world in Japan. Warner Bros. (distributed Outrage) has their own Yakuza film The Outsider with Swedish director Daniel Espinosa (Snabba Cash, Safe House) attached to direct with Michael Fassbender (Shame, The Counselor, Prometheus, X-Men First Class) wanted for the lead. The Outsider focuses on a WWII POW who is broken out by the Yakuza and is forced to work for them.
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