Production on American remake of 'The Raid' delayed until at least early 2015

Although set to begin this September, production on director Patrick Hughes' (The Expendables 3) American remake of The Raid has now officially been delayed until at least early 2015.

According to Variety's report, a possible reason for why the Screen Gems remake's delay is casting. According to one of their sources, actors like Anthony Mackie, Luke Evans, Frank Grillo and Ethan Hawke are among the frontrunners for the lead.

Another one of their sources, however, says that casting has yet to begin and that no offers have been sent out. As such, it is expected at the moment that the delay in production is for trying to secure one of these names, or possibly even someone bigger. Should they get one of their names into their busy schedules, they could potentially gain more buzz.

When speaking to Coming Soon in April, Hughes had the following to say about his take on this movie:

"We have a really, really interesting take on that film. One thing, obviously the original just blew my mind and I was fortunate enough to catch up with Gareth Evans in LA at the premiere of The Raid 2 . The thing that blew my mind with that film was the aesthetics and the fight sequences but also the simplicity of the premise, and there’s so much you can do with that. So our take on it is really interesting and I feel like if anything what I want to do is elevate the emotional aspect of it, and I think those are my favorite action films of all time when you can balance the action and the emotion, and what he did with his first Raid was phenomenal."

Additionally, Hughes stressed in this specific interview that they "not there to recreate that film beat to beat," and also talked about implementing a D.E.A. team set up by the Bush administration following 9/11 when they realized "they were so closely aligned." He went on to describe it like this:

"So they set up a DEA task team that’s six units and they work across borders and sort of act like Navy SEALS. You never read about it, you never hear about it, but they go on these missions. So that’s a really interesting take and a really nice premise and also what’s interesting on this take on it is the clash of cultures and the clash of martial arts, the fighting styles, which is something that’s going to be a lot of fun when we’ve really started pre-vizzing stuff."