From Shadow and Act:

"The folks at Twitch, who broke the initial story about Spike Lee’s involvement in the US adaptation of Oldboy, just revealed that Josh Brolin is the production and financing company’s (Mandate Pictures’) top choice to star as the lead character in Spike Lee’s direction of the Japanese manga made popular by Park Chan-wook’s 2003 award-winning film."

Interesting.

For those who don't know, the original film version of the manga had an all Korean cast and the lead was played by Choi Min-sik.

To better illustrate my point, here is a side by side comparison of Josh Brolin (white guy to the left) and Choi Min-sik (Korean guy to the right). 

So, here is my question:  is this just another example of whitewashing? If so, should we hold the producers as well as Spike Lee, although he is just a hired director, to the same standards that we have held others, who engage in this form of cultural appropriation?

Not to long ago, we were all (or at least some of us) seething over M. Night Shyamalan's lack of Asian cast members in the live action version of Airbender. And most recently is the outrage over the casting, or impending white-washing, of the lead character in the live action version of the popular Asian-animated series Akira.  That movie is set to be directed by Albert Hughes of the Hughes Brothers.

I'm not trying to start no stuff here but if this sort of cultural assimilation was happening to For Colored Girls...(and I'm not talking about the Tyler Perry version neither) or Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Black folks would be all on it.  Listen, there is no other black director, who I respect more than Spike. He is a proud race-man, who pulls no punches, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes.  But I have to say that Spike, who recently took Clint Eastwood to task over his lack of Blacks soldiers representation in any of the WWII flicks, is being surprisingly quiet about what appears to be the bastardization of yet another Asian films by Hollywood.

I'm just saying...