Sad news out of Hollywood:

Columbia Pictures and parent company Sony Pictures Entertainment have optioned the English language rights to remake “Rust and Bone” director Jacques Audiard's much-celebrated 2009 French crime thriller “A Prophet”...

Be prepared for a mainstream Hollywood remake, because the English-language version of this super-gritty piece of cinema realism will be produced by producers Neal H. Moritz and Toby Jaffe through Moritz's Original Film, whose filmography includes this year's “Fast and Furious 6” and “Jack the Giant Slayer.”

It's worse than that. Among Moritz's production credits, these films:

• Total Recall (2012)
• The Change-Up
• Battle Los Angeles
• The Green Hornet
• Vantage Point
• Gridiron Gang
• Stealth
• S.W.A.T.
• xXx

Plus all of the Fast und Furious movies. And he's remaking my favorite film of 2010.

At one point in “Un Prophete,” a fellow inmate tells Malik (Tahir Rahim), “The idea is to leave here a little smarter." I don't think that'll be possible in the Hollywood version.

Malik (Tahar Rahim) and Cesar (Neils Arestrup) contemplate the American remake of their Cesar-winning film.

All previous entries