Sony Pictures Classics has made a pre-emptive buy of sorts, picking up Zhang Yimou’s latest while it is in production. The purchase has the added appeal of being a liberal remake of a Coen Bros. film, but the buy perhaps has more to do with the fact that as the press release states it: this “will mark the eleventh collaboration between” SPC and Yimou. Michael Barker and Tom Bernard share the same kind of working relationship with a certain filmmaker from Spain named Pedro Almodovar.
Stunning Case of the Three Gun Shots (don’t expect this to be the final title) is a remake of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple, which is set in a Chinese noodle shop in a sand dune-specked desert, rather than a bar in an unnamed Texas town. The owner of the noodle shop’s seemingly simple plan to murder his adulterous wife and her lover quickly spins out of control after the introduction of a gun into the lives of characters more accustomed to knives and swords.
SPC bought the North America, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand rights to the film. A showing at Cannes 2010 would not be out of the question.