If you’re hoping Hollywood will start churning out some original stories, this is not the article to read. A pair of remakes are rolling forward and have brought in wordsmiths to craft dialogue, layered characters and carefully structured commercially viable scripts.
The update of the 80s cheese fave MONSTER SQUAD has a script coming from cousins Mark and Brian Gunn (of the upcoming JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH sequel). Brian is the bro of filmmaker James Gunn (SLITHER), so let’s hope it runs in the family. Rob Cohen (who produced the original) is directing the flick from Paramount and Platinum Dunes.
Fred Dekker’s original flick (co-written by LETHAL WEAPON guy Shane Black and featuring FX work by Stan Winston) involves a group of middle-school misfits obsessed with creatures of the night. When Dracula blows into town for some evildoing with Frankenstein’s monster, Wolfman (nards), the Mummy and Gill-Man as his henchmen, it’s up to the adolescent fiend-fighters to send Drac and his cronies back to the hell that spawned them.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. has brought in Alex Garland to pen the new version of LOGAN’S RUN. Garland knows his sci-fi — he also wrote 28 DAYS LATER, SUNSHINE, the discarded HALO and the upcoming redo of JUDGE DREDD. Commercial director Carl Rinsch is the latest to take the reins (Bryan Singer and TRON LEGACY director Joseph Kosinski previously warmed the chair during the project’s lengthy development).
LOGAN’S RUN (based on a 1967 novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson) is set in a futuristic society where gem-palmed citizens willingly die at a certain age as a means of population control. Logan is a “Sandman”, a law officer sent to hunt humans who escape the city to continue existing after their designated death day, and while on the hunt he ultimately discovers plenty of reasons to keep living.
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