Warner Brother’s seemingly perpetually in development remake of Logan’s Run has (yet another) new writer on the project. The studio has brought on former Los Angeles police officer turned screenwriter Will Beall to be the latest scripter to try and bring the 1967 science-fiction novel by William F. Nolan back to the screen.
The original 1976 adaptation was set in a futuristic society that maintained its Utopian appearance by placing citizens to death when they turned 30 years old. Michael York starred as Logan 6, who in his job as a “Sandman” is tasked to track down those who try to run away from their death sentence. But as his own 30th birthday approaches, Logan begins to question the laws he is sworn to uphold and decides to make his own run for freedom from them.
Even though he has no genre experience, Beall strikes me as an interesting and perhaps even inspired choice for the job. At its heart, Logan’s Run isn’t so much a science-fiction adventure story as it is a story about characters who are in law enforcement. Logan’s disillusion with the system he has sworn to protect is a common enough trope in such stories. It is the type of material that strikes me as playing to Beall’s strengths.
Beall will be working with director Nicolas Winding Refn on the script’s latest draft. Producer Joel Silver has also attached Ryan Gosling to the project.
Currently, Beall is a staff writer on ABC’s Castle series. His screenplay Gangster Squad has just been greenlit for production by Warners and the studio tapped him in January to work on a remake of Lethal Weapon.
Warners has been working on this remake of Logan’s Run since the mid-1990s. Future GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra director Skip Woods was signed to the project in 2000 before Bryan Singer took over in 2004. Writers Ethan Gross and Paul Todisco a draft of the screenplay and then Singer teamed with collaborator Dan Harris for a pass before another of Singer’s frequent collaborators Christopher McQuarrie delivered a rewrite. However, after two years of work on a screenplay, Singer backed out of the project in May 2006.
Things lay quiet on the remake for over a year until Joseph Kosinski pitched a version in August 2007 of the story that excited Warners brass so much that they virtually hired the neophyte director on the spot. Although Kosinski worked on yet another new screenplay with Timothy J. Sexton, he soon left the project to direct TRON: Legacy for Disney.
Last May, commercial director Carl Erik Rinsch was brought on board along with writer Alex Garland. Their participation didn’t last that long however.
So by my count that makes Beall at least the eighth writer to attempt to tackle Logan’s Run over the past decade.
