Sylvester Stallone looks set to follow in Charles Bronson's footsteps, embarking on a remake of the 1974 vigilante drama Death Wish. Fresh from revisiting his own back catalogue with Rocky Balboa and the forthcoming Rambo sequel, the 61 year-old is in talks to both direct and star in the updated version, which looks likely to be a co-production between MGM and Paramount.
Directed by Britain's Michael Winner, the original Death Wish starred Bronson as Paul Kersey, a lily-livered architect who becomes a snake-eyed angel of vengeance after his beloved wife is bumped off by street trash. A major box office hit, the film was credited with spawning an eclectic sub-genre of paranoiac vigilante flicks, including Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Abel Ferrara's Ms 45. The film itself was followed by a quartet of sequels, the last of which - Death Wish V: The Face of Death - appeared in 1994, featuring a splenetic, septuagenarian Bronson, still as mad as he ever was.
The recent arrival of Death Sentence, starring Kevin Bacon (and based on a novel by Brian Garfield, author of the book upon which the original Death Wish was based) and The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster, suggests the vigilante genre might be set for a bloody revival. "We are looking at our library to determine which potential franchise properties make the most sense for us to produce, and Death Wish was clearly one that jumped out," MGM chief operating officer Rick Sands told Variety. "We hope to get a deal done with Sylvester Stallone to direct and star, and like the Rocky and Rambo films, we see this as another potential franchise for him."