Bruce Willis Wants to Win You Back With a ‘Death Wish’ Remake

A remake of Charles Bronson’s gritty 1974 classic Death Wish has been in the works for several years, though it didn’t seem likely that Paramount and MGM would get this thing off the ground. Enter Bruce Willis and the directing duo behind the Quentin Tarantino-endorsed indie crime thriller Big Bad Wolves, and you’ve got yourself a Death Wish remake.

Deadline reports that Willis has signed on to star in the remake based on the Charles Bronson film (which launched an increasingly weird franchise) and Brian Garfield’s classic novel. Willis will play the Bronson role, obviously, as an architect whose life is torn apart when his wife is brutally murdered. Desperate for justice, he becomes a vigilante who spends his nights killing muggers on the streets of New York.

The Grey director Joe Carnahan wrote the first draft of the script back when he was attached to helm the remake (he’s now on Bad Boys 3), with Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler) and Graham Yost (Justified) delivering the most recent drafts. Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado will helm Death Wish as their follow-up to 2013's Big Bad Wolves. The duo previously made their debut with 2010 Israeli horror film Rabies.

Regardless of your feelings about a Death Wish remake, it’s a pretty good gig for Willis, who’s recently spent his time in between Die Hard sequels making lesser, direct-to-video action flicks and only occasionally committing to genuinely good projects like Moonrise Kingdom and Looper. The world needs another good, non-Die Hard Bruce Willis action flick, and a Death Wish remake could do the trick.