John Woo is reimagining his 1989 Hong Kong classic The Killer for a new English-language remake, and he’s swapping the gender of the titular assassin.
Now, British actress Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones, Fast & Furious franchise) will take the lead as Woo’s multi-faceted action star, now named Zee instead of the original’s Ah Jong. The remake will also feature Sam Worthington, Diana Silvers, French actors Omar Sy, Grégory Montel, and Saïd Taghmaoui, and ’90s soccer icon-turned-actor Eric Cantona.
The trailer shows Zee at the height of her powers as an adept assassin in the Parisian underground, kicking ass and taking names — when she refuses to kill a young woman, however, she faces threats from both the Parisian police and local criminal organizations. “Never send boys to do a woman’s job,” Zee says amidst high-flying action and tension-ridden sequences.
The official logline reads, “The kinetic action thriller stars Nathalie Emmanuel as Zee, a mysterious and infamous assassin known, and feared, in the Parisian underworld as the Queen of the Dead. But when, during an assignment from her shadowy mentor and handler (Sam Worthington), Zee refuses to kill a blinded young woman (Diana Silvers) in a Paris nightclub, the decision will disintegrate Zee’s alliances, attract the attention of a savvy police investigator (Omar Sy), and plunge her into a sinister criminal conspiracy that will set her on a collision course with her own past.” Watch the trailer for The Killer below.
Woo returns to direct The Killer nearly 35 years after he helmed the original, with the screenplay written by Brian Helgeland, Josh Campbell, and Matt Stuecken. A remake of The Killer was previously confirmed back in 2022, and has been in the works since 2007; Lupita Nyong’o was previously rumored to star as the titular killer back in 2018, but left the project after numerous delays. Now, the film will land exclusively on Peacock on August 23rd.
John Woo’s last film was 2023’s Silent Night, which starred Kid Cudi and Joel Kinnaman. Revisit our review.
