Nicolas Winding Refn Revives Cult Classic Maniac Cop With A Gritty Remake
It’s happening: 1988 original filmmaker William Lustig says the action-horror remake starts filming this fall.
Maniac Cop is lurching back to life. After decades of stop-and-start chatter, Nicolas Winding Refn is finally stepping behind the camera to remake the 1988 cult slasher, with filming set for the fall. Yes, the Drive guy is going back to neon-drenched violence and morally murky lawmen. Feels right.
Refn locks in his next project
The original film's director, William Lustig, says the remake is officially happening and that Refn is making it his immediate priority.
"Nic has it as his next project, that will shoot in the fall."
Lustig also laid out why this thing took so long to get off the ground and why it ping-ponged from a feature to a TV series and back again.
"What happened with HBO was, HBO got sold to Discovery, and Discovery — after they’d spent over a million dollars developing the scripts for the series — Discovery says, 'We’re not in the Maniac Cop business.' They gave all the scripts back to us, so we didn’t have to pay a turnaround, so that was it with HBO. Now it’s moving ahead. I can’t announce the company, but it will become known."
He also admitted this one has been living rent-free in a lot of heads for a long time: "It’s sort of like one of these things that’s bouncing around in your head, and you wanna just get it out." Fair.
So, what is Maniac Cop?
The 1988 original starred Tom Atkins, Laurene Landon, Richard Roundtree, and a young Bruce Campbell. Set in a New York that oozes grit, it follows two cops tracking a killer in uniform who is supposed to be dead. The poster did some heavy lifting with the immortal tagline: "You have the right to remain silent... forever."
Lustig returned for two sequels: Maniac Cop 2 in 1990 and Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence in 1993. Over the years, a remake shuffled through development hell, even morphing into a planned HBO series at one point before the corporate seas changed and the scripts boomeranged back to the rights holders. Now it is a feature again, with Refn steering.
Why Refn, why now
Refn crashed onto the scene with Pusher in 1996, then gave Tom Hardy a star-making showcase with Bronson in 2008. Drive in 2011 turned him into a household name for movie people — Gosling barely speaks, the jacket does, and the movie snagged an Oscar nomination to boot. Since then, Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon drew mixed-to-harsh reactions. He could use another thunderclap.
Maniac Cop is a snug fit for his sensibilities: stylized brutality, pulpy morality, and a mythic antihero in uniform. There is also a topical layer baked in if he wants it — a resurrected cop rampaging through a polarized city — that lets him sharpen the edges without losing the pulp.
What happens next
- Refn's Maniac Cop is set to film this fall; the company backing it stays under wraps for now.
- The HBO series iteration is dead; those scripts were returned after more than a million dollars in development spending.
- Before Maniac Cop, Refn has a thriller called Her Private Hell on deck, starring Yellowjackets standout Sophie Thatcher.
Development on this title has been a saga, but with Lustig saying cameras roll in the fall and Refn eyeing it as his next at-bat, the big undead cop in the room finally has a badge again.