Jan De Bont Returns As Director With Remake Of Johnny Cash Film 'Five Minutes To Live'

Jan De Bont had a moment in the sun in the mid '90s when he directed Speed and Twister, and it should never be forgotten that he was a kick-ass cinematographer. You might have seen his work in a minor film called Die Hard. But De Bont last directed Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, released in 2001. Though a few different projects have seemed like possible new films for the director in the years since, nothing has taken that final step of delivering a cake with a concealed metal file so that De Bont could break himself out of director jail.

Now producers Joseph and Jack Nasser, who have a film named For a Good Time, Call... premiering at Sundance, are evidently ready to toss that big ring of cell keys to De Bont. They've signed him to direct Five Minutes to Live, which will be a remake of a heist film that was originally released in 1961 with Johnny Cash in the lead role.

Deadline says the script for the new version was written by Raul Inglis, and it sounds like the film follows the original pretty well, as it features "two men as they execute a terrifying bank robbery. One guys holds the bank manager's wife hostage and the other tells the manager she'll be killed in five minutes unless he transfers money to an account of their choosing."

I saw the original film probably twenty years ago on a crappy half-legit VHS release; I'm struggling to remember much of it know. The film was the first major film role for Cash, and I do remember him being pretty good for it, if not exactly spectacular.

But take out cash, and there's a lot of room to remake this in a variety of different ways. Jan De Bont isn't the guy that would first come to mind to do the job, but if the guy who directed Speed shows up, the project might work out fine.

Here's a clip from the original film: