Dwayne Johnson Wants To Remake BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA

Well, this one is making my head hurt a bit.

Dwayne Johnson is in negotiations to star and produce a remake of the 1986 cult (and personal) favorite Big Trouble In Little China. The Wrap is reporting that the film is a favorite of the actor and that the project’s screenplay will be written by X-Men: First Class scribes Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz.

Johnson would star as Jack Burton, a macho trucker who gets dragged into a centuries-old mystical war in an underground world below San Francisco’s Chinatown. Kurt Russell starred in the original film directed by John Carpenter. The original did not make much at the box office, but was one of a number of off-kilter films from the 1980s that found its audience and a second life through the burgeoning home video explosion. Kim Cattrall, James Hong and Victor Wong co-starred.

Now I like Johnson as an actor in action films. He’s perfectly fine for the material he usually works with. And off-screen he seems like a nice enough, fun loving guy in the interviews I’ve seen. That said, I think this is an even worse idea than most remake happen to be. The charm of the original movie is that Jack Burton is not the action hero of the film. That role falls to Jack’s buddy Wang (Dennis Dun). Jack is the comedy relief sidekick, but he just doesn’t know it. It’s a great twist on a premise and one that Russell sells quite effortlessly. But it is also a tricky role to pull off and it requires a lot from both the actor and director to get the right tone. Now maybe if they find the right director this can be pulled off. However, I don’t think that Johnson has the chops to pull this off on his own and am having trouble seeing how this will turn out well. In the meantime, enjoy the trailer for the original film below.