Actress Lupita Nyong’o is no longer part of john Woo’s remake of his 1989 crime drama The Killer at Universal Pictures.
Speaking at the Hawaii International Film Festival, Woo told Deadline:
“There was a scheduling problem because she’s so popular right now. We rewrote the script and it took so much time…she had to leave for another project.”
The title role will remain a racial and gender-switched version of Chow Yun-fat’s iconic role of a stone-cold killer whose icy veneer is melted by a young female singer he accidentally blinds during a hit job on a mobster. The remake will reportedly stick to the formula with the hitwoman accidentally blinding another woman. Woo says:
“The biggest reason why I wanted to do this movie again because [I wanted] ‘the killer’ to be a woman — that’s exciting to me. It will make the movie have a different look.”
Woo also confirmed during his talk, he has no involvement in Paramount’s proposed remake of his 1997 action thriller Face/Off.
