Warner Bros. has set David Ayer to direct a remake of The Dirty Dozen. Easily one of the most famous WWII thrillers of all time (even among those who've never actually seen it), Robert Aldrich's Dirty Dozen hit theaters in 1967. An adaptation of E.M Nathanson's novel, the movie follows a group of hard-edged Army prisoners (played by actors like Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Jim Brown) as they're trained to carry out a top-secret mission ahead of the Normandy invasion. Assuming they make it throw the "job" alive (a big if), the survivors will be offered pardons for their crimes.
The Dirty Dozen was inspired by a real-life group in WWII (known as the Filthy Thirteen), but it's gone on to inspire all manner of fictional films (WWII-related or not) since its release. And while Quentin Tarantino's Oscar-winning WWII movie Inglourious Basterds is one of the best-known recent examples, The Dirty Dozen's influence has also been evident in films like 2016's DCEU release, Suicide Squad (which has a similar premise, but with comic book supervillains). It's only fitting, then, that the director of the latter has been charged with overseeing The Dirty Dozen remake.
Deadline is reporting WB has recruited Ayer to write and direct The Dirty Dozen remake, with Simon Kinberg's Genre banner producing. The film is described as being a contemporary re-imagining that features an appropriately multi-ethnic cast and bears a resemblance to Ayer's scripts for The Fast and the Furious and Training Day, as far as tone and style goes.The studio hopes to get the movie into production in 2020, once Ayer is done rewriting the earlier script draft by Marcos Ramirez (Daredevil, The Defenders).
Suicide Squad isn't the only film Ayer's directed that owes a debt to the original The Dirty Dozen. The filmmaker's 2014 movie Fury is a similarly gritty WWII action-drama about a tank commander and his grizzled crew as they make their way through Germany towards the tail-end of the war. It's possible Ayer wouldn't have been as interested in the project if it had been a straightforward remake, seeing as he's already cut his teeth on a thriller about antiheroes set during the second World War. By making it a contemporary story, however, The Dirty Dozen retelling will allow Ayer to combine his interests in narratives about unscrupulous types going to war and modern-day, multi-ethnic groups and cultures.
As much as Ayer's films tend to overlap with one another in terms of themes and their topics, quality is another matter. His directorial efforts tend to oscillate from critically-derided pop genre movies (some of which strikes a chord with audience, like Suicide Squad and Bright) to well-received, but lesser-seen, action-dramas like Fury and End of Watch. It's anyone's guess, then, where The Dirty Dozen will land on that spectrum, especially since it's angling to update a classic WWII story in terms of both setting and context. Still, he's very much in his wheelhouse with this project, so there's a solid chance Ayer will knock The Dirty Dozen remake out of the park.
Source: Deadline