Science fiction classic Logan’s Run has long been rumoured to be grinding its way through the remake machine, and now there’s some fresh intel to be had: Warner Bros has hired Ryan Condal (USA’s Colony) to pen a new screenplay. And it won’t be a remake — not exactly.
Plus, it’s not an entirely new script. It’s based on a treatment by Simon Kinberg (Fantastic Four, X-Men: Apocalypse), which is in turn based on William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s 1967 novel, not the gloriously costumed 1976 film starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter. A big difference between those two is that in the original film, the characters’ fated “Last Day” was set at age 30; in the book, it’s just 21. So if the new movie hews closer to the source material, we’ll be seeing a much younger cast staring at their palms, trying to evade the Sandmen and whatnot. (Given that last year Kinberg likened Logan’s Run to The Hunger Games, this age range seems to be almost guaranteed.)
As Deadline notes, prolific producer Joel Silver (The Matrix) has been trying to get a new Logan’s Run off the ground for the past two decades:
At various points Bryan Singer & Christopher McQuarrie, Joseph Kosinski, Carl Erik Rinsch & screenwriter Alex Garland, Nicolas Winding Refn (whose version would have starred Ryan Gosling and Rose Byrne), and even video game producer Ken Levine have been attached to the film. Often wildly disparate concepts for the remake have been under consideration, most recently a version that would see a woman playing Logan-5. Condal’s signing on to expand on Kinberg’s as-yet unrevealed idea suggests WB has settled on a version they’re happy with.
For his part, in addition to working on Colony, the busy Condal is also working on a rewrite of the Dwayne Johnson-starring Rampage, which would bring the classic 1980s monster arcade game to the big screen.