(New York) Filmmaker Spike Lee will reunite with American actor Denzel Washington on his next film, an adaptation of a thriller by Japanese master Akira Kurosawa, High and Low (1963), which will be released in theaters before being broadcast on Apple TV+, Apple announced on Wednesday.
The original film is inspired by the true story of a kidnapping that will turn the lives of a rich family but also its driver upside down.
This is the fifth time that Spike Lee will direct Denzel Washington, notably after Malcolm Xand the thrilling thriller Inside Man (2006).
Since then, the New York director has been crowned with an honorary Oscar for his entire career and was rewarded with a statuette for best adaptation in 2019 for the film BlacKkKlansmanwhich tells the story of the infiltration of a Ku Klux Klan cell in the late 1970s. The film had already won the filmmaker the Grand Prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
Throughout his career, punctuated by classics like Do the right thing (1989), Spike Lee filmed the lives of African-Americans, particularly in his neighborhood of Brooklyn, and highlighted the racism they suffered in American society.
For his part, Denzel Washington has been nominated ten times for the Oscars and won two, as best supporting actor for glory (1990) and best actor for Training Day (2002).
Apple Original Films, which will produce their remake of Kurosawa’s film in partnership with A24, has not indicated a release date. Filming is scheduled to begin in March.