In case you forgot or didn’t hear, Nicolas Winding Refn is producing a remake of William Lustig’s Maniac Cop. Lustig has already met with the remake machine back in 2012 with Maniac (which was honestly fantastic), so it looks like his other big property was due at some point. However, this remake has some impressive people behind it. Besides Refn’s guiding hand, comic book writer Ed Brubaker will be handling the script. Brubaker’s run on Captain America was the foundation for most of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (he even has a cameo in the film as Scientist #2, everyone’s favorite scientist), so the guy knows how to spin a yarn. The big question mark for this project has been its director, and today’s reveal has made this film leap to the top of my anticipation chart.
Twitch reports that John Hyams will be in the director’s chair, and if that doesn’t make you happy, then we might have to end this relationship and start seeing other movie sites. John Hyams resurrected the Universal Soldier franchise with Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning and they are awesome. Hyams saw the inherit horror concept in that franchise (bringing back soldiers from the dead to fight as mindless drones) and ran with it hard, turning the last two entries into entirely different kinds of action films. If you haven’t seen them, I can’t recommend them enough.
Suffice to say, Hyams has copious experience with the undead (he’s currently being wasted on that Z Nation show), and the tale of the rejuvenated Matt Cordell seems right up his alley. And if his Universal Soldier films are any indication, his remake will have plenty of violence to drool over.
No timetable as far as this film’s release goes, but we’ll keep our eye out for sure. The world can always use more vengeful zombie cop movies.
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