From the files marked “Is Nothing Sacred” comes news that Euro Gang Entertainment is remaking A Fistful Of Dollars.
Yes, yes. I know the original is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. So was Licence To Kill. It doesn’t make this not feel like some kind of cinematic blasphemy. I may be being too harsh. They could pull this off.
The iconic Sergio Leone western classic was a career breakthrough for Clint Eastwood and served as the jumping-off point for The Man With No Name trilogy of films that included For a Few Dollars More and The Good the Bad and the Ugly.
Euro Gang head honchos and producers Gianni Nunnari (300, The Departed) and Simon Horsman (Magazine Dreams) are behind the project, alongside Enzo Sisti (The Talented Mr. Ripley). Jolly Film, one of the three production houses behind the original, is also involved.
The three movies are basically touchstones of the Spaghetti Western genre and are classed as important works of cinema. A Fistful Of Dollars follows a wandering gunfighter who takes the opportunity to play two rival families against each other in a small town divided between them.
The original resulted in a successful lawsuit by Toho, the production company behind Yojimbo. Kurosawa wrote to Leone directly, saying:
“Signor Leone, I have just had the chance to see your film. It is a very fine film, but it is my film. Since Japan is a signatory of the Berne Convention on the international copyright, you must pay me.”
He and Toho received 15% of the film’s revenue, and it is believed that Kurosawa earned more money from the financial settlement than he had made from his own film, Yojimbo.
A Fistful Of Dollars was an international co-production between Italy, West Germany, and Spain. It had a famously low budget of $200,000, and Eastwood was paid $15,000 for his role.