Keanu Reeves is in talks for The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil, seven years after the remake was announced

Keanu Reeves is in talks to star in James Wan's The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil at Paramount, Variety reported on Tuesday, after The Hollywood Reporter broke the news. Wan directs. It is his first feature since 2023's Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

The film remakes the 2019 Korean thriller of the same name. Don Lee, also known as Ma Dong-seok, who starred in the original, is attached to reprise his role. He has been attached since 2022.

The original did not debut at Cannes

Variety describes the Korean film as having "debuted to rave reviews" at the Cannes Film Festival. TheWrap, covering the remake in 2022, wrote that it "made its premiere" there. Cannes was the film's festival premiere. It was not its debut.

• The festival's own page lists it out of competition, in the Midnight Screenings. Running time: 109 minutes. Written and directed by Lee Won-tae.
• The Korea Times reported on May 23, 2019 that the film screened at the Grand Théâtre Lumière on Wednesday, with Lee, Ma, Kim Mu-yeol and Kim Sung-kyu in the room, and that the audience stood for about four minutes. Lee thanked the crowd "for watching the movie until midnight."
• The same report says the film had been released in South Korea the week before and was already No. 1 at the local box office, with more than 1.9 million viewers.
• TheWrap puts its Korean gross at $24.8 million, with a No. 1 opening weekend. In the U.S. it got what TheWrap called a modest release from Well Go USA.

The festival's page also names a French distributor, Metropolitan Filmexport, and a release date of August 14, 2019, three months after the Korean opening.

So the midnight crowd in Cannes stood up for a film that 1.9 million Koreans had already paid to see. The ovation was real. It just was not first.

Seven years from Stallone to Reeves

The remake has now been in development for seven years:

• 2019: the remake is unveiled with Sylvester Stallone's Balboa Productions producing, shortly after Cannes, per TheWrap.
• June 28, 2022: Paramount lands the remake. Ma will reprise his role "as a mob boss who teams up with a cop" to track a serial killer. TheWrap describes the film as "in the early stages of development."
• Spring 2026: Wan boards as director, per Variety.
• October 2026: Reeves enters talks.

The paperwork grew faster than the cast. Variety lists Wan, Michael Clear and Jason Blum (via Blumhouse Atomic Monster), Ma (Big Punch Global), Stallone and D. Matt Geller (Balboa), Chris S. Lee (B&C Group) and Lorenzo di Bonaventura as producers. Brian Helgeland and Billy Acumen are executive producers. Eric Pearson wrote the latest script, based on earlier drafts by Shay Hatten and Helgeland.

That makes eight producers, three screenwriters across the drafts, and one actor attached since 2022. Reeves would be the second.

One thread runs back to Seoul. Cannes lists B.A. Entertainment as the original film's production company. In 2022, TheWrap named Billy Acumen of B.A. Entertainment among the remake's producers.

Ma Dong-seok plays the same man twice

The festival synopsis sets it up simply. A feared gang boss barely survives an attack by a man who escapes unidentified. His reputation is damaged, and he needs the attacker found. A police detective is convinced the attacker is the elusive serial killer known as K. The two join forces.

The Cannes credits list three leads in the original: Ma as gangster Jang Dong-su, Kim Mu-yeol as detective Jung Tae-seok, and Kim Sung-kyu as the killer known as K. The plot pairs the gangster and the cop against the killer. The cop wants him behind bars. The gangster wants him dead.

Ma keeps the gangster. Variety's report does not say which part Reeves is discussing. The original has two other leads.

For Reeves, Paramount is becoming a habit. Variety notes he will next voice Shadow again in Sonic the Hedgehog 4, which Paramount has dated for March 19, 2027. He most recently starred in Apple TV's dramedy Outcome, directed by Jonah Hill, and voiced Duke Caboom in Toy Story 5.

What is still unknown

• Whether the deal closes. Reeves is in talks, not signed.
• Which role he would play.
• A production start or release date. None has been announced.
• Whether Sylvester Stallone, attached as a producer since 2019, does anything beyond producing. Nothing else has been reported.
• Whether Lee Won-tae, who wrote and directed the original, has any role in the remake. He is not on Variety's list of producers.

In 2019 the Korean film needed one week to reach 1.9 million viewers at home. The English-language version has needed seven years to put a second name next to Ma Dong-seok's, and that name is still in talks.