Steven Spielberg’s Cannes Jury Duty Leads DreamWorks To Remake Deal On ‘Like Father, Like Son’

EXCLUSIVE: Who says jury duty is a waste of time? DreamWorks is negotiating right now with Fuji TV for remake rights to the Japanese film Like Father, Like Son (Soshite Chichi Ni Naru). The catalyst for the deal: DreamWorks principal Steven Spielberg seeing the Hirozaku Kore-Eda-directed drama when it screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May while he headed the jury. The film received the Prix du Jury prize there.

DreamWorks insiders confirm a deal is in the process of being made, but they deny that Spielberg is eyeing the film as something to possibly direct when the remake is developed. In the film, an upper middle class career-oriented couple push their 6-year-old son to succeed in school as hard as they push themselves. They are shocked to discover from the hospital where the baby was born that a mistake was made, and that their biological son is being raised by another family. When the overachievers find that the other family is of modest means and not as ambitious as they are, the wealthy couple tries to wrest their actual son away.