Samuel Jackson, Bruce Hornsby join Spike Lee's 'Old Boy' remake

Samuel Jackson, Bruce Hornsby join Spike Lee’s ‘Old Boy’ remake

By Steven Zeitchik

Aug. 17, 2012 12 AM PT

Williamsburg, Virginia — EXCLUSIVE: The English-language remake of Chan-wook Park’s cult favorite “Oldboy”already had some big-time names, what with Spike Lee directing and Josh Brolin in the lead role.

Now the revenge drama is getting two more notables: Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Hornsby.

Jackson has come on board for a small but critical part in the new film, according to a person close to the production who was not authorized to talk about it publicly. The actor will play the man who is being tortured by the hero (Brolin) in a key revenge scene.

Fans of the original will remember the scene as perhaps the most visceral and disturbing of the film. Protagonist Dae-su Oh exacts vengeance on a man who once guarded him by extracting his teeth one-by-one with the claw end of a hammer.

The new film, which begins shooting this fall in Louisiana and New York, won’t go with the tooth removal, instead inflicting a different kind of torture (we won’t spoil it here, but it’s plenty painful).

Jackson and Lee recently appeared together at the BET Awards in this spoof that quickly went viral. The actor of course also recently starred as Nick Fury in “”The Avengers” and will soon be seen in a movie about as anticipated as “Oldboy”--Quentin Tarantino”s”Django Unchained.”

In a separate development, Hornsby has joined the new ”Oldboy” as the film’s composer. The piano virtuoso has a longstanding relationship with Lee; among other things, he composed the score for Lee’s basketball documentary “Kobe Doin’ Work” and the auteur’s new”Red Hook Summer,”giving the spiritually themed coming-of-age story a melancholy and wistful spin.

In an interview in his hometown of Williamsburg, Va., this week, Hornsby (more on him and his eclectic career shortly) told The Times that the musical ideas for “Oldboy” are beginning to percolate. “I’m working on a few things and I’ll send them to Spike soon,” he said. “The ‘D’ word has been spoken to me by him,” the musician added, referring to a dark tone. “But I think the score will also run the gamut.”

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Steven Zeitchik

Steven Zeitchik is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer who covered film and the larger world of Hollywood for the paper from 2009 to 2017, exploring the personalities, issues, content and consequences of both the creative and business (and, increasingly, digital) aspects of our screen entertainment. He previously covered entertainment beats at Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, has contributed arts and culture pieces to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times and has done journalistic tours of duty in Jerusalem and Berlin. While at The Times he has also reported stories in cities ranging from Cairo to Krakow, though Hollywood can still seem like the most exotic destination of all.

Samuel Jackson, Bruce Hornsby join Spike Lee’s ‘Old Boy’ remake

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