Way back in 2014 it was announced that Drive filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn was looking to produce a remake of the cult 1988 slasher Maniac Cop with director John Hyams (Universal Soldier: Regeneration). While the project has been on and off over the past five years, Deadline now brings word that it is officially moving forward, albeit as a TV series at HBO as opposed to a feature film.
“I’ve always been a devoted admirer of John Hyams,” said Refn. “We’ve been talking about a re-imagining of the Maniac Cop films for a number of years, but as we continued to work on the material, we found ourselves wanting to explore the world we were creating in greater depth. Turning Maniac Cop into a series will allow us to realize our wildest ambitions and to reach an enormous audience though partners HBO and Canal+. This show will be an unadulterated, action-packed horror odyssey. Given the current state of the world, though, Maniac Cop will also be a strong commentary on the decline of civilization”.
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Directed by William Lustig, the original Maniac Cop starred Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurence Landon and Robert Z’Dar, and followed the investigation into a mysterious serial killer in a police uniform. The logline for the series reads:
Set in Los Angeles, Maniac Cop is told through a kaleidoscope of characters, from cop to common criminal. A killer in uniform has uncaged mayhem upon the streets. Paranoia leads to social disorder as a city wrestles with the mystery of the exterminator in blue – is he mere mortal, or a supernatural force?
Refn is set to serve as showrunner on Maniac Cop, while he and Hyams will direct every episode.