The “classic” film noir Clint Eastwood always wanted to remake: “It’s a great little idea”
Even though the breakout role of his career was in a remake, one that opened the door to legal action, Clint Eastwood has never been all that interested in repurposing somebody else’s work on either side of the camera.
Akira Kurosawa and Toho made a decent amount of money from A Fistful of Dollars after successfully arguing that Sergio Leone’s classic had blatantly ripped off Yojimbo, something Eastwood had been aware of since he read the script for the first time.
Since then, he hasn’t touched a remake or a reboot, but there have been a couple of spiritual instances. He basically played John Huston making The African Queen in White Hunter Black Heart, and Pale Rider is just one of many westerns to use the basic template of Shane to suit its own agenda.
The most high-profile do-over since the first instalment in the Dollars trilogy was the four-time Academy Award winner’s abandoned update of A Star Is Born, which had Beyoncé and his American Sniper lead, Bradley Cooper, lined up for the lead roles, before the latter ended up taking it over himself.
Eastwood has helmed multiple literary adaptations, and he’s picked up more than a few projects that Steven Spielberg put down for one reason or another, but as a director, he’s never remade anything. He thought about it, though, and had his sights set on one of film noir’s most influential titles.
Rudolph Maté’s DOA was released in 1950 and follows Edmond O’Brien’s Frank Bigelow, an accountant who’s been poisoned and only has 24 hours to live. Refusing to go down without a fight, he enlists Pamela Britton’s Paula Gibson to retrace his steps and discover the identity of his murderer, before being drawn into an even larger conspiracy.
Due to an error in filing the copyright that saw the film fall into the public domain, it’s been remade no less than four times. Eddie Davis’ Color Me Dead was the first out of the blocks in 1969, followed by three more versions, all called DOA or Dead on Arrival, which were released in 1988, 2017, and 2022.
However, if Eastwood had shown a bit more conviction, he’d have gotten there first. “It’s a great little idea,” he told Paul Nelson. “It could always work. I looked at it as a possible remake, but there were certain problems about it. Another thing is, to me, it was kind of a classic. I loved DOA. There’s something pretentious about taking a film like that and doing it again.”
The star headlining and possibly directing an updated take on a hard-boiled thriller about a dying man trying to unravel the mystery of his own death could have been incredible. As it stands, though, the best remake of DOA by a country mile is, and will always be, unless something truly special comes along, Jason Statham’s batshit insane Crank.
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