Why American Remake Of Train To Busan Is Delayed Addressed By Attached Director: "I Have Been Ready Since 2020 But..."

The American remake of Train to Busan gets a new update from the attached director. Released in 2016, director Yeon Sang-ho's original Korean film follows a group of people on a passenger train from Seoul to Busan as a zombie virus outbreak consumes South Korea. The horror flick was a hit and an American Train to Busan remake was subsequently announced in 2021 with James Wan producing and the title The Last Train to New York. While originally scheduled to release in April 2023, the film was removed from the release calendar in 2022, with no updates arriving since.

Now, attached director Timo Tjahjanto replies to a fan question on X, formerly Twitter, about the Train to Busan remake's status. Though the Night Comes For Us filmmaker reveals that he's been set to start the project for five years now, he calls the movie "stalled" for reasons outside his control. Check out Tjahjanto's post below:

"I’ve been ready since 2020," Tjahjanto writes in his post, "but when a film is stalled thats [sic] not up to the director."

What This Means For The Train To Busan Remake

Why It Won't Be Arriving Anytime Soon

Tjahjanto may not be actively working on The Last Train To New York, but he is keeping busy with other projects. The director just recently released The Shadow Strays on Netflix last year, following up his success with The Night Comes for Us in 2018. His next movie is Nobody 2 starring Bob Odenkirk, which hits theaters on August 15 this summer. It was also just announced that Tjahjanto will direct Jason Statham in The Beekeeper 2, with filming reportedly getting underway later this year.

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Tjahjanto's busy schedule is bad news for the American Train to Busan remake. He is presumably in post-production on Nobody 2 now and will seemingly be jumping into filming on The Beekeeper 2, which could hit theaters in 2026. If The Last Train to New York does end up moving forward, then, it seemingly wouldn't be able to get underway until well into 2026. This also depends on why the film has been delayed, though, and it's unclear if it is facing script problems, creative disagreements, or if Wan has lost confidence in the project.

Our Take On The Last Train To New York

Does Train To Busan Need An American Remake?

The zombie horror subgenre has experienced its ups and downs over the past few years, and it's clearly not as popular as it was during its heyday in the 2010s with projects like The Walking Dead and World War Z (2013). Train to Busan came at the perfect time for this subgenre, and its reach certainly extended into North America, despite being presented in Korean. The good news is that Train to Busan still holds up as a horror film, with some intense set pieces and strong performances from Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok, and Kim Su-an.

While there's nothing wrong with the original, it also would still be exciting to see Tjahjanto's take on the material. With his past martial arts movies, Tjahjanto has proven himself incredibly adept at dynamic and hard-hitting action set pieces, and The Last Train to New York could have incorporated his unique action style into the horror space. Though the American Train to Busan movie may not be completely dead yet, it doesn't sound like audiences should expect it anytime soon.