Back in 2015, X-Men producer Simon Kinberg took over the development of the long gestating new Logan's Run at Warner Bros. Since then there's been little in the way of news, aside from the arrival and subsequent departure of two directors: first Bryan Singer and then Joseph Kosinski. Having finally made the jump from producing to directing with X-Men: Dark Phoenix, however, the problem of who will man Logan's Run's cameras appears now to have been solved. Kinberg will be directing the film himself.
Kinberg's plan since he came aboard has been to turn William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's 1967 novel into a Hunger Games-style franchise. "Logan’s Run is the granddaddy of Maze Runner and Hunger Games and so many of these books and movies now," he told Collider. "So yeah, [Warners] are seeing it as a potentially really big franchise. The focus is on making a great movie, but there is some thought about what the future films would be and where you could take Logan in the next one."
Nolan and Johnson’s book – famously adapted for the screen in 1976 starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter – imagines a future society that appears idyllic, but is organised according to one tough rule: those reaching a certain age (21 in the book, 30 in the film) must report to execution chambers. Runners are those who refuse to surrender to the authorities, with officers known as Sandmen sent to track them down. York’s Logan is one such law keeper, who discovers that all is not quite what it seems. The film spawned a short-lived (pun entirely intended) TV series{
Warners have been trying to get a new version moving for at least 15 years, previously hiring writers and directors including Alex Garland, Will Beal, Christopher McQuarrie and Nicolas Winding Refn to work on scripts and develop ideas, with the latter bringing Ryan Gosling aboard for one of the efforts that came closest to being realised. But try as they might, none of them managed to get it to production.
Peter Craig, who wrote both halves of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay is the latest screenwriter to take a crack at the adaptation, replacing Rampage's Ryan Condal. Logan's Run isn't yet at the point where it's got a solid release date, but in the meantime, Kinberg's Dark Phoenix is out in the UK on 31 October.
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