There's something impressively bold about the teaser trailer Netflix just released for its latest upcoming streaming series – effectively opting to remake a cult favourite, but without one of the most famous and lauded actors of his generation. The film in question is Man on Fire, but this time around it'll be a series – albeit one that seems just as violent and edgy.
The original Man on Fire is most famous for featuring a fairly terrific pair of performances in lead roles from the peerless Denzel Washington and a young Dakota Fanning, one of the best child actors to ever work in movies. Now, though, those roles are in new hands – and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is front and centre.
He's playing John Creasy, an ex-soldier who now works in the private sector as a bodyguard and security coordinator for those with the money to pay him well for his time. It would seem that he's actually been out of the game for a while, but comes back to fulfil a new job and finds himself unexpectedly attached to Poe (Billie Boullet), a young girl he has to protect.
That all lines up pretty closely with the 2004 Washington film – including the name of the main character. The young girl's name has been tweaked, though, as has the setting, from the looks of things. This could be one of those situations where the two projects are subtly different in ways that make them both stand on their own two feet, hopefully.
That all makes solid sense, though, given that the movie and the series are both sourced from a novel of the same name by A. J. Quinnell. That also means you can expect the same tight pacing and heavy action that the movie brought to our screens a couple of decades ago.
Netflix's teaser trailer is actually quite revealing, not least because it gives us some glimpses of confrontations and fights, including one at the end of the trailer that shows Creasy seemingly blowing up part of a prison in order to get to a target. It could be a major hit when it comes out on 30 April, if I know anything about the streaming charts.
