Zoe Saldana, Mark Wahlberg, and Marion Cotillard are reportedly all circling starring roles in French actor/writer/director Guillaume Canet’s English-language debut – a stateside remake of the 2008 thriller in which he starred titled Les Liens Du Sang (or Rivals as it was titled in English).
The Stateside remake, which will be called Blood Ties, will be a 1970s-set action-crime-drama centered on two rivaling brothers, one a pimp and the other a cop.
Wahlberg is said to be up for one of the starring “rivaling brother” roles, although no word on whether he’ll be the cop or the pimp, who just been released from prison. What roles Cotillard (who, by the way, is Canet’s partner) and Saldana will play are currently not public info.
I’ve seen just one of director Canet’s behind the camera efforts – his 2006 international breakout thriller Ne le dis à personne (or Tell No One), based on the novel by Harlan Coben – and I was impressed. It’s a well-acted, paced and taut thriller with a few twists and turns that kept me engaged throughout. Ben Afleck apparently agrees with the material, because he’s currently working on an American remake of that film as well.
Canet didn’t direct Les Liens Du Sang by the way; he just starred in it as one of the brothers. No word on whether he’ll do the same in the Stateside remake.
Not much else is available on Blood Ties, but we’ll be paying attention to further developments.
As for Zoe… she has The Words coming up, with Bradley Cooper; after that, sequels to Star Trek and Avatar are somewhere in her future. So this would likely be a welcomed project for her that she could easily squeeze in.
