Thai Heist Thriller 'Bad Genius' Is The Latest Criminally Underseen Movie To Get A Hollywood Remake
Another day, another English-language remake of an Asian movie that deserved to get more eyeballs on it. Bad Genius is a Thai high school heist movie that broke box office records across Southeast Asian and became Thailand's highest grossing movie of 2017, and even became a minor hit at film festivals in the U.S. Now an English-language Bad Genius is in the works, with You're the Worst writer Eva Anderson set to pen the adaptation.
Deadline reported from Cannes that Erik Feig's Picturestart and Patrick Wachsberger's Picture Perfect Entertainment are developing, producing and attached to finance an English-language remake of Bad Genius, based on the 2017 teen heist movie written and directed by Nattawut Poonpiriya. The original film followed a genius scholarship student who starts a cheating crime ring in order to pay her way through school, and is hired to pull off an impossible heist to help the rich, privileged kids at her school pass a college-admissions test.
The Thai heist film is a surprisingly gripping film that marries the teen ennui of Sofia Coppola with the energetic visual dexterity of Edgar Wright. It's sleek, kinetic, and way better than its somewhat silly premise suggests — something I fear could be lost in a Hollywood remake. Nattawut Poonpiriya's stylish direction is the primary reason this movie worked so well — that and star Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying's resilient performance as a good student that breaks bad.
Hollywood already has their own SAT-cheating movie: the entertainingly dumb comedy The Perfect Score, which starred a baby Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson. I get the feeling that the remake of Bad Genius will end up resembling a glossy studio film like The Perfect Score more than the weird arthouse vibe of the original. Though the story more resembles the real-life college admissions scandal that recently shook Hollywood, though Deadline reports that rights were secured before the scandal broke.
On that note — why remake Bad Genius when you've got an even juicier real-life college admissions cheating scandal that is just begging for a big-screen adaptation? Give us the Operation Varsity Blues blue with Laura Dern playing Felicity Huffman and Diane Lane as Lori Loughlin, you cowards.