Washington In 'The Manchurian Candidate' Remake

Denzel Washington will reprise Frank Sinatra's role in an update of the 1962 political thriller "The Manchurian Candidate," reports Variety.

No director is attached to the Paramount project, which the crooner's daughter, Tina Sinatra, set up at the studio this spring. John Frankenheimer directed the original. The remake was written by Dan Pyne ("The Sum of All Fears").

Based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon, "Candidate" combined a political thriller with black-hearted satire of anticommunist hysteria. Sinatra starred opposite Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey.

When "Manchurian" was re-released theatrically in 1988, it was critically hailed, with Sinatra's performance cited as the best of his career. Sinatra gave Tina his blessing to set up a "Manchurian" remake.

"He believed, as we do, that premises can be brought into the future," she told Daily Variety in March.