According to The Hollywood Reporter Mark Protosevich, co-writer of I Am Legend is in talks with Dreamworks to write a screenplay for a remake of the Korean film Old Boy for director Steven Spielberg and box office champ Will Smith.  According to The Reporter, it was Smith who starred in I Am Legend, which earned $584 million at the box office worldwide, who was instrumental in getting Protosevich and interview for the potentially lucrative Old Boy gig (see “Spielberg Wants to Remake Old Boy”).

Smith, who now appears to be totally committed to the project, told a representative of the Film School Rejects Website that rather than looking at Chan-wook Park’s award-winning 2003 film, Spielberg and Smith were going back to the original source material, Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi’s manga: “There’s the original comics of Old Boy that they made the film from, and that’s what we are working from, not an adaptation of the film.”

Of course Chan-wook Park’s film is quite faithful to original source material, but the Old Boy manga, which comprises 8 volumes (all published here by Dark Horse) contains much more material than Park was able to include, which along with adapting the storyline to a U.S. setting could provide ample room for a very different take on the story from the one provided by Park in his masterful film.  Whatever the difference with Park’s movie, the Spielberg/Smith version, if it gets made, should make the 8 volumes of Old Boy manga very hot.