Spike Lee and Denzel Wahsington are teaming up for the fifth time, recreating Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime drama High and Low, Apple Original Films announced on Friday.
“The fifth Denzel and Spike joint. High and Low, a reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa's classic. Filming starts in March,” the streaming platform wrote on X.
Based on Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom, the original film stars Toshiro Mifune as a businessman who gets undone after paying the ransom for a kidnapping.
The upcoming adaptation, which will be penned by Alan Fox, marks Lee and Washington’s first film together since 2006’s Inside Man. They previously worked on movies like Malcom X (1992), He Got Game (1998) and Mo’ Better Blues (1990).
Developed and produced by A24, Escape Artists and Mandalay Pictures, the reimagining of High and Low will go on the floors in March. It will be released theatrically by A24 before heading to Apple TV+, following in the footsteps of 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, which got Washington an Oscar nomination.
Last seen as the retired US Marine and DIA officer Robert McCall in The Equalizer 3, the final instalment of the American vigilante thriller film series, Washington will be next seen in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 alongside Paul Mescal. Lee last directed 2020’s war drama film Da 5 Bloods starring Delroy Lindo, Jonathon Majors, Melanie Thierry and Chadwick Boseman.
