Colin Firth offered lead villain role in Oldboy remake

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We love a bit of counter-intuitive casting here at Total Film , so it's intriguing to here that Colin Firth has been offered the role of villain Adrian in Spike Lee's Oldboy remake.

Josh Brolin is currently the only actor locked in to star in the US version of the Korean modern classic.

Both Christian Bale and Rooney Mara were linked to the film, but have since gone off to shoot new Terrence Malick movies.

Oscar-winner Firth is best known for his stiff-upper-lipped roles (which he does very well), but it'd be interesting to seem him playing a scheming villain (especially seeing as conventional wisdom would have seen him and Brolin swapping roles).

The report comes from Twitchfilm , and there's no word yet on how likely he is to actually sign up.

Given the starkly original (not to mention brutal) nature of the original Oldboy , it's no surprise that folk are treating the remake with hostility, but could some great casting turn that around?

Firth will next be seen in the Coen brothers-scripted remake of Gambit , before starring in WW2 revenge drama The Railway Man .

Oldboy is expected to open at some point next year.

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.