David Ayer, the filmmaker behind Bright (2017) and Suicide Squad (2016), will write and direct a remake of The Dirty Dozen for Warner Bros.
Simon Kinberg, who steered many of Fox’s X-Men movies and produced Murder on the Orient Express, is producing.
Ayer will also produce via his Cedar Park Entertainment, with the company’s Chris Long as executive producer.
The original Dirty Dozen, directed by Robert Aldrich in 1967, was an actioner about a group of Army convicts coerced into a mission to take out Nazi officials in a heavily guarded chateau in exchange for their freedom.
The film, which starred Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charlies Bronson and Telly Savalas, among a host of others, set the mold for future “bad guys on a suicide mission” films.
The new film will not replicate the World War II setting but will be a contemporary story, according to insiders.
Ayer has made several dark and gritty movies set in worlds where the characters have nothing to lose and the accompanying precarious camaraderie. He helmed the 2012 police drama End of Watch, the 2014 war drama Fury, the big-budget action-fests Suicide Squad, and Bright.