French crime thriller 13 Tzameti getting U.S. remake treatment

13 Tzameti was amazing, and I’m not at all surprised that a remake is in the works. It was so absorbing and amazingly real, my eyes remained wide the entire film, as if I was watching some sort of sick underground documentary. We’ll see what happens in the translation of the French crime thriller.

According to Variety, Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone, Jason Statham, Sam Riley, 50 Cent and Ray Liotta will round out an ensemble cast for 13, a U.S. remake of the 2005 film, which won the grand jury prize for world cinema at the Sundance Film Festival.

One very positive note is that Gela Babluani, who wrote and directed the original, is writing and directing the remake as well, which starts production in New York at the end of November 2008.

Riley will play the title character, a naive young man who assumes a dead man’s identity hoping to find money, and instead stumbles onto an underground competition where the wealthy gamble on human beings getting shot in the head or not, in a massive Russian Roulette competition.

Rourke will play a convict in a Mexican prison, who’s sold into competition. Winstone will play a competitor who has been released from a mental institution to participate. Rapper and actor 50 Cent will play an employee assigned to escort Rourke’s character to the win-or-die bloody game. Statham plays a wealthy British man who bets on the competition and has a peculiar interest in one of the competitors. Liotta will play an undercover cop on the hunt for the illegal game.

13 will be in theaters sometime in 2010.

Below is a trailer for the original French thriller 13 Tzameti.