http://chud.com/nextraimages/wildgeeseburton.jpgAll that’s missing from this Variety story trumpeting Gianni Nunnari’s plans to remake The Wild Geese is the obligatory casting of Jason Statham, Vinnie Jones and a gang of other British toughs to fill out the roles originally occupied by Richard Burton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris. And if you think "occupied" is a strange substitution for "brought to life", then you haven’t seen the movie.

Rupert Sanders, whom I’ve never heard of (he doesn’t even have an IMDb page!*), has been tapped to call action on what promises to be another British-inflected mercenary romp. The 1978 original, directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, centered around an attempt to spring an imprisoned African leader; judging by Nunnari’s promise to take his naughty lads "from the murky London underworld to the battlefields in Africa", it sounds like this production will not deviate much from that narrative. Hurray.

I’ll be honest with you: the only thing I remember from McLaglen’s flick is the scene where the Geese kill off a roomful of slumbering guards with cyanide gas. The rest is just a blur of perfunctorily staged action and alcohol bloat.

Nunnari’s Hollywood Gang Productions will likely get this winner distributed by Warner Brothers, which is where they’ve also set up the currently on-hold adaptation of Frank Miller’s Ronin.

*Okay, a little Googling reveals he’s a commercial director of some note, but let’s pretend that they hired a rank amateur! Or Shekhar Kapur! And I’m guessing you haven’t seen Elizabeth: The Golden Age!