Rashomon remade, or rather, re-remade.

Variety says a remake of the late Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) — set in modern America, rather than medieval Japan — is in the works, timed to coincide with what would have been Kurosawa’s 100th birthday in 2010. Such a film is, of course, unnecessary, but it is not without precedent. The film was previously remade — with Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson and William Shatner — as a Western called The Outrage (1964). Of course, some of Kurosawa’s other samurai flicks were also remade as Westerns around that time, with classic results; consider how The Seven Samurai (1954) became The Magnificent Seven (1960), while Yojimbo (1961) became A Fistful of Dollars (1964). So a new remake need not be a travesty. Variety notes that the forces behind this remake are also working on The Masque of the Black Death, an anime based on a Kurosawa script set in a plague-ridden version of early-20th-century Russia. It, too, is planned for a 2010 release.