Oscar winner "Lives of Others" set for remake

Ulrich Muehe and Ulrich Tukur in a scene from the film "The Lives of Others" in a photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics. The Oscar-winning German spy drama is set to be remade as an English-language movie, Daily Variety reported in its Thursday edition. [Reuters]

ANGELES  - The Oscar-winning German spy drama "The Lives of Others" is set to be remade as an English-language movie, Daily Variety reported in its Thursday edition.

The trade paper said the project would be developed by former Miramax Films chiefs Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and filmmakers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella.

"We would just desperately love for that film to be something that reaches more people (via remake)," Pollack was quoted as telling the paper. "We haven't gotten locked into making it yet, but we're working hard at trying to get it going."

Pollack and his partners worked on the deal with "Lives" writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who won the foreign-language Academy Award on Sunday for his debut feature. It was not clear what the Oxford-educated filmmaker's involvement with the remake would be.

"The Lives of Others" revolves around a secret agent in 1980s East Germany who wiretaps the apartment of an artistic couple, and finds himself sucked into their lives, with tragic consequences. After three weeks in limited release across North America through Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Classics, it has sold $1.3 million worth of tickets.

The Weinstein brothers are developing through their Weinstein Co., while Pollack and Minghella are partners in Mirage Prods. Pollack won Oscars for producing and directing the 1985 movie "Out of Africa," and Minghella won a statuette for directing 1996's "The English Patient."