The 1988 Jean Claude Van Damme favourite Bloodsport has emerged as a remake candidate for A24. More here.
Who knew that 2025 would be the year of Bloodsport? While the 1988 martial arts flick may hold a cherished place in the heart of many a Jean-Claude Van Damme fan, there surely aren’t too many folks out there that put a Bloodsport revival on their bingo card for this year.
However, the signs have been present for some time that the film’s enduring legacy would lead us to a remake getting off the ground. A couple of attempts have already been made over the years, with Dead Calm director Philip Noyce and V For Vendetta's James McTeigue both trying to get a version of Bloodsport off the ground but without success.
Then this year launched with the news that a group of former Call Of Duty developers were working on a video game take on another of Van Damme’s 80s ouvre Kickboxer. Now it looks like the Van Damme rennaisaince is set to continue with A24 bringing its peerless credentials to a genre we haven’t yet seen the studio take on: a martial arts flick.
A24 is making moves into previously unexplored genres as part of a strategy to widen its slate. Back in 2023 in the wake of Beau Is Afraid's costly dip at the box office, there were reports that the studio would be pulling back on ‘ traditional character/auteur-driven dramas’ and focusing some of its output on more action-based features.
The Adam Wingard-directed Onslaught is coming at some point, a film from the Godzilla V Kong director that is being pegged as an action horror thriller. And now we may well be getting a Bloodsport remake. The plot of the original followed ‘Frank Dux, an army captain and ninjutsu practitioner who competes in an underground full-contact martial arts tournament called the Kumite in Hong Kong.’
Little else is known about the project at this time, but if it has the same cultural impact as the first film, A24 will likely be happy. Van Damme’s action classic even filtered down into British primary schools where everybody was afraid of the one kid whose parents had let them watch Bloodsport. Who knew what kind of bone-cracking moves he might have learned?
We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it.
