Paul Walker is in talks to star in producer Luc Besson’s remake of his 2004 action film District 13. The remake will be titled Brick Mansions and move the action from its original Paris in the near future setting to the US, very probably Chicago.
Walker will star with District 13 David Belle, the Frenchman who created the sport of parkour which is featured heavily in the film and its sequel District 13: Ultimatum. Two years before it was featured in a major action sequence in the James Bond franchise reboot Casino Royale, District 13 first introduced to cinema audiences the sport of parkour or free running, in which participants run through an urban landscape, gymnastically avoiding all sorts of obstacles.
Walker will be playing a cop who goes undercover in a walled off slum section of a city known as Brick Mansions in pursuit of a nuclear weapon that has been stolen by drug dealers. He will ally himself with Belle’s character, who is the only one in the slums who isn’t afraid of the gangs and drug dealers that populate it.
Besson, who co-wrote the original’s screenplay, is also sharing a writer’s credit on this Americanized version with Robert Mark Kamen. There is no word yet as to whom will direct the film. The original was directed by Pierre Morel, who performed the same duty on Taken.
Via Deadline.
