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Variety: James Ransone Replaces Nate Parker for Oldboy Role

The entertainment trade magazine Variety reported on Tuesday that actor James Ransone (Sinister, Inside Man, The Next Three Days) will replace actor Nate Parker (Red Tails, Red Hook Summer, The Secret Life of Bees) for Spike Lee's remake of Chan-wook Park's live-action film Oldboy. Ransone had previously worked with Lee on Inside Man and Red Hook Summer.

Parker had been slated to play a small role of a doctor who works with Elizabeth Olsen's (Silent House, Martha Marcy May Marlene) character.

Variety added that Parker left the project due to scheduling conflicts with his commitment for the Non-Stop film where he is starring beside Liam Neeson.

Actor Josh Brolin (Milk, Men in Black 3), actor Sharlto Copley (District 9, The A-Team), and Olsen are attached to this planned remake of Chan-wook Park's live-action film Oldboy, which is itself an adaptation of Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi's manga.

Samuel L. Jackson (Jungle Fever, Pulp Fiction, The Avengers) is also slated to appear in the film as man tortured by the main character, and Grammy-winning musician Bruce Hornsby (Red Hook Summer) will compose the film's score.

Variety earlier described the Korean film's story about "a man who's kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years. When he's finally released and begins looking into the reason for his captivity, he soon finds out that his kidnapper has even more torturous plans for him." (The original manga has the protagonist imprisoned for a different number of years and does not have the Korean film's added plot twist ending.)

The movie began filming this month, and it is slated for a release in 2013.

Image via IMDb.