Clint Eastwood shot to big-screen fame in a series of “spaghetti westerns”, the first of which, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), was based on a Japanese samurai flick called Yojimbo (1961). Now things are coming full circle, as Variety reports that a Japanese remake of Eastwood’s final western Unforgiven (1992) is now in the works.

The new film will be directed by Korean-Japanese filmmaker Lee Sang-il, and will star Ken Watanabe (best known in North America for his parts in such Hollywood films as The Last Samurai, Batman Begins and Inception) as a retired samurai modeled after the Eastwood character. Watanabe, incidentally, has actually worked with Eastwood himself already, having starred in Clint’s World War II movie Letters from Iwo Jima (2006).

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