HOLLYWOOD – November 19, 2015 — (Gephardt Daily) — As far back as I can remember, it has long been chatted about. A remake of the 1976 sci-fi classic “Logan’s Run.” In 1979, after the film was turned into a luke-warm TV series, I chatted briefly with writer George Clayton Johnson about doing a follow up.
I remember him smiling and saying “It would be something.”
The original film, which turns 40 next year, takes place in the year 2274 and on the surface, it all seems to be an idyllic society. Living in a city within an enclosed dome, there is little or no work for humans to perform and inhabitants are free to pursue all of the pleasures of life.
There is one catch however: your life is limited and when you reach 30, it is terminated in a quasi-religious ceremony known as ‘Carousel.’ Some, known as ‘runners,’ do try to escape their fate when the time comes and it’s the job of ‘Sandmen’ to track them down and kill them.
Logan is such a man and with several years before his own termination date, thinks nothing of the job he does. Soon after meeting a young woman, Jessica-6, he is ordered to become a runner himself and infiltrate a community outside the dome known as Sanctuary and to destroy it. Pursued by his friend Francis, also a Sandman, Logan and Jessica find their way to the outside.
Outside the dome they discover a beautiful, virtually uninhabited world. Logan realizes that he must return to the dome to tell them the truth about their world.
Fast forward to 2015 and now according to writer/producer Simon Kinberg, the film would be perfect to reboot into 3 or maybe even 4 films as a franchise.
“It’s something that potentially is a Hunger Games kind of franchise that is about a younger audience for a younger audience with a big idea,” Kinberg explained in a recent interview in Collider, “and Logan’s Run, as you know, is the granddaddy of ‘Maze Runner’ and ‘Hunger Games’ and so many of these books and movies now. So yeah, they’re seeing it as a potentially really big franchise.”
Kinberg said his vision of the new film does not stray very far from the film Michael Anderson made 40 years ago.
“There’s a lot from the original movie,” he added, “the setup is great, I think there’s a lot of world creation that’s pretty awesome as well, though ultimately that’ll be the director’s domain … And then there’s a lot of, I guess I would call it, reinterpretation from the original film rather than just a whole scale recreation.”
Incidentally, George Clayton Johnson is still around. Best known for his scripts for “The Twilight Zone” and “Ocean’s 11, 12 and 13,” for George Clooney. I bet Johnson could be tapped to pen a reboot of his story.
