Death Wish remake loses its directors, hangs on to its Bruce Willis

According to Deadline, MGM and Paramount’s remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson classic Death Wish has just lost directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado. Bruce Willis is set to star as a vigilante on a vengeance-fueled rampage in the film, and it sounds like his involvement is an indirect cause for Keshales and Papushado deciding to drop out of the project. Deadline says that the two directors tend to make stylish action movies “with a sense of humor,” but when they tried to throw a bit of their usual dark comedy into Death Wish, the studios pushed back. Apparently, since Willis had already signed off on the script and a release date was already penciled in, MGM wasn’t “in the mood for a major makeover.” So, basically, it came down to choosing whether the studio should risk frustrating Bruce Willis by sending him a new script or risk losing the directors by rejecting their ideas. Naturally, MGM chose Bruce Willis, and now it has to find a new pair of directors—or maybe even a single director, since that’s how this usually works.