Logan’s Run is one of those projects that just can’t seem to get out of the development starting block. Directors, scripts and announcements have come and gone and yet still it sits in purgatory, waiting to be bathed in the sweet green light of production. Now there’s another filmmaker angling to get it moving: Carl Rinsch.
The ads director linked to Ridley Scott’s company who came to studios’ attention thanks to short film **The Gift has been attached to several high-profile movies of late, including the Alien prequels and the still-developing 47 Ronin. So far, the sum total of movies he has in production is zero (though 47 Ronin is apparently scheduled for January), but then getting any film off the ground, particularly in these budget-conscious times, is never an easy task.
Still, he’s in talks with Warner Bros, which has been trying to make Logan run for years. While it made a few attempts to crawl out of limbo in the 1990s, the big push came when Bryan Singer took an interest, cranked out a script and some pre-visualisation, then promptly ditched it to make Superman Returns, and we all know how that worked out.
Since Singer, Robert Schwentke, James McTeigue and Joseph Kosinski have all flirted with the idea of the remake, but none have actually done real work on it.
The original 1976 sci-fi pic, itself an adaptation of William F Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s 1967 novel, is set in a seemingly idyllic utopia with one teensy tiny flaw: to maintain the supply of food and other vital necessities, no one is allowed to live past the age of 30 (in the book it's 21, which is apparently the plan for the new movie too).
Enforcers known as Sandmen are employed to track down those who try to stay alive, and our hero is Logan (Michael York), a Sandman who reaches his own deadly milestone and decides to go on the run after learning the truth about his job.
If Rinsch does sign, he’ll have to wait a while, since producers Akiva Goldsman and Joel Silver are planning to bring a new writer aboard.