The movie is 10 years in the making
Netflix is looking to recreate one of the biggest modern action movies – The Raid. The Indonesian movie, along with its sequel The Raid Redemption will be re-imagined for the Western audiences, and will have Michael Bay producing along with XYZ Films. The original movies’ director, Gareth Evans will be on board as an executive producer. The new director will be Patrick Hughes (The Hitman’s Bodyguard), who will also co-write the project with James Beaufort.
Key elements
The concept of the first Raid movie was simple – a group of elite policemen from Jakarta go to arrest a ruthless crimelord, who lives in a massive old building. Murderers, junkies, thieves, and everything in between reside in various levels, and all are underlings of the crimelord.
We see the Indonesian martial art Pencak Silat in full display as Rama (played by Iko Uwais) and his team of cops try to arrest the criminals in the building. The action was what gave the movie global fame. However, the movie and its sequel didn’t manage to earn more than $10 million each, even though the budget was of $5 million or less.
The Netflix version of The Raid
Netflix will be Americanizing the movie, with the location being Philadelphia and its “Badlands” area. The story will follow an elite undercover DEA task force attempting to catch an elusive kingpin while dealing with a gang of cartel informants.
The production team from Netflix released a statement saying that they’re very excited to see Patrick’s unique vision of The Raid, which promises a fresh take on the material while also paying respect to the original films. The movie was in the pipeline for many years until Netflix managed to scoop it up and get the project rolling.
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