'Logan's Run' Remake Envisioned As A Huge 'Hunger Games'-Like Franchise

Hollywood has been trying to remake the science fiction film Logan's Run for a long time now. So long that we've written about it over 20 times on /Film over the past 10 years.

X-Men series helmer Bryan Singer was originally on board to reboot the concept in 2005 , before dropping out for Superman Returns. Commercial director Joseph Kosinski briefly entertained the idea of directing the film before finding Tron Legacy over at Disney. Carl Erik Rinsch was developing the remake with Sunshine/28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland, but moved on to 47 Ronin. Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn developed the project as a Ryan Gosling vehicle for a year and a half with two writers (Andrew Baldwin and Will Beall). After Gosling and Refn dropped out, Bioshock creator Ken Levine was hired to get the long-in-the-works reboot on track.

In July, Simon Kinberg was the latest person to be brought on board to try to get the project going again. Kinberg, who already has his hands pretty full with the Star Wars and X-Men universes, is writing a treatment for the sci-fi remake, which he hopes to produce alongside Joel Silver (who has been on the project from the beginning of this whole development cycle). Kinberg reveals his vision for a Logan's Run franchise and gives an update on the search for a director, after the jump.

Collider caught up with writer/producer Simon Kinberg recently and was able to get some updates on the long-gestating project. According to Kinberg, they are currently "talking to directors for that movie" and claims that the project is "definitely" a priority for Warner Bros.

It's something that potentially is their Hunger Games kind of franchise that is about a younger audience for a younger audience with a big idea. 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.

The Hunger Games name-check isn't surprising as Logan's Run was certainly one of the inspirations for that book-turned-movie-franchise. But the fact that Kinberg that the remake is being envisioned a huge franchise is unexpected.

As for how much Kinberg is involved in the planning for the future of a Logan's Run franchise, the producer compares it to what he's been doing with the X-Men movies and gives the standard line we've heard many times before (I'm not sure anyone who says this line even believes it):

There is some thought about what the future films would be and where you could take Logan in future movies, but the focus is on 'Make a great movie.' It was 'Let's make one great movie that people fall in love with but be prepared that if they do, we could make future films and what would they look like and where would you go again with the character in the next film?'

In the past incarnations of the project, the creatives involved were looking more at the book source material for inspiration than the 1970s feature film. But Kinberg says "there's a lot from the original film" in his treatment, clarifying that its more "reinterpretation" than "whole scale recreation." But he also reveals his cards a bit when he talks about the "world creation potential for the movie/franchise:

I love the original movie and I think the storytelling in the original movie is pretty wonderful. The set up 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.

The 1976 film adaptation of Logan's Run was based on a 1967 novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. The plot involved a dystopian future society in which the population and the consumption of resources are kept in equilibrium by killing everyone who reaches the age of thirty – thus neatly (and inhumanely) avoiding overpopulation, which was of growing concern at the time. Those who try to escape their destiny are known as a "Runners," and are hunted down by operatives known as Sandmen. The main character of the story is a Sandman named Logan who makes a run for it.

When Singer was attached to the film, I had hoped that they would go with a full-on sci-fi approach:

The new film will tackle idea of the "greater good" and people devoting themselves to an ideology blindly, while keeping the novel's concepts of runners, Sanctuary and gangs outside the system. Kosinski came into Warners with a presentation that included graphic art and animated previsualization that set the look, color, tone and style of the movie he wanted to make.

Watch the trailer for the 1976 film above.