Back in 2014, an English-language remake of The Raid was announced, but during stages of development the film became stuck in an on again/off again, development hell status. Within the process, director Patrick Hughes (Expendables 3) dropped out for reasons unknown. And Frank Grillo (Beyond Skyline, Wolf Warrior 2), who was heavily associated with the project from day one, kept the topic afloat during interviews (i.e.”it’s still happening”).

In the end, Grillo announced that he and filmmaker Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces) were re-launching the remake from a newly revised script by Carnahan and co-wrtier Adam G. Simon (Man Down).

Now, Carnahan is going on the record (via Collider) to say that he’s starting prep on The Raid remake in the next few weeks. Here’s what he had to say about it (and the differences you can expect from the original):

“You meet Frank’s character having just rotated back from a really, really, brutal special forces operation. He’s got soft tissue damage in his hands, and his rotator cuff is blown out, and they take fluid off his knees, and the doctors basically tell him, “Listen you’re at the razor’s edge of PTSD and you need three months of just nothing, some R&R, because you’re jacked up.’ And in that space he gets the message that his brother, who he thought had been dead for four years, is actually alive and working for a very bad guy in Caracas, and in 18 hours they’re gonna kill his brother. These forces are gonna descend and murder the bad guy and murder the brother, so do you wanna go and get your brother, who you thought is dead? Do you want that opportunity? So that’s where we start.”

“I want the entire movie to feel like the knife fight between Adam Goldberg and the German in Saving Private Ryan. Everything. In every great action film there’s always an emotional quotient that you’re dealing with… You have to have a sense of stakes. For all of the tremendous excess of those last two Matrix films, which I enjoyed the hell out of, they never really got to the tension of just Keanu Reeves trying to answer a phone at the end of the first movie. There was great pathos, there was a great sense of, ‘Is he gonna make it?’ The spectacle I think outweighs the heart and soul of it, and that’s what you have to remember is you’ve gotta have that attached.”

We’ll keep you updated on the remake as we learn more. Stay tuned!