Just when you thought that all those rumours about the planned Seven Samurai remake had died down and disappeared, Reuters writes that the Weinstein Company has launched a $285 million fund to finance more than thirty films with an Asian theme over the next six years. The Seven Samurai remake is specially mentioned alongside with a live-action Mulan.
Whether the Seven Samurai project still aims to star Donnie Yen, Zhang Ziyi and (what has always felt more like a rumour than anything else) George Clooney is unknown. So is the state of the script adaptation allegedly currently being written by John Fusco, as was reported earlier.
The Reuters news article about the Weinstein Co. fund can be found at Yahoo! Entertainment News.
$285 million might not be enough for 30 films by today’s standards, but if they shoot these in Asia then it should cut costs down by a bit, still… And then again how many of these will be made in the end. I’m a bit skeptical that Seven Samurai will make it through such a large bunch too, but if anyone has the evil genius to do it, it is the Weinsteins. Ugh. 🙁