Director John Woo has some ambitious plans. Variety reports that he's trying to line-up A-list talent for English-language remakes of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai and of his own 1989 breakout film The Killer. For those who aren't familiar with those films, Le Samourai centers on a hitman trying to cover his tracks while The Killer is about an assassin who is forced to join forces with a policeman after being betrayed by his employers. My apologies for those brief descriptions as they sell both films short and don't explain as to why both are revered as classics. Maybe one day I'll get a chance to do a retrospective on both movies and can go in to more depth about why you need to see them.

Hit the jump for more on what Woo has planned for the future.

Woo is currently at work on Flying Tigers, a World War II drama that focuses on Chinese fighter pilots. The director would also like to make a musical. At one point, he was in talks to direct the film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera but producers balked when Woo said he wanted to alter some of Andrew Lloyd Webber's songs.

With last year's Chinese historical-epic Red Cliff, Woo received the critical acclaim that had long eluded him during his time in Hollywood. If he returns to Hollywood moviemaking, it will be interesting to see if he gets the creative freedom he says he was denied on all of his movies except for Face/Off. Although if Face/Off is the only movie that didn't receive notes, I have to give crazy amounts of praise to whoever pitched in on Hard Target.

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