How do you remake Logan's Run? What do you do with Box? Critically adored director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) explained to us how he'll have to alter the original novel for modern day audiences.
We nabbed Nicolas Winding Refn at the Drive roundtables at Comic-Con and asked him about his planned Logan's Run remake (starring Ryan Gosling). He talked about going back to the original novel source material, by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson.
How do you update a film like [Logan's Run]? Do you keep Box?
I have done this, I've gone back, and I've seen the movie, I've seen the TV show and I've started to read the novels. I've read the first one. And I'm beginning to get an angle on it that I think could be interesting. I think the challenge with Logan's Run is that the premise is so brilliant, that the payoff will almost always be disappointing. Except, if you come up with something really, really, really, really brilliant.
Do you have that? You're planning on altering something?
I think it needs to be altered, because everything in Logan's Run became true, and more in our society nowadays. So it's thinking "What would Logan's Run feel like if it was written today, about 2,000 years into the future."
How did Logan's Run come true since the book came out?
You can kind of say the obsession with youth culture, the open sexuality, the drug taking. The book [deals with] a lot of sexuality. It was written in the 60s and it had a lot of political undertones. And all that we've gone through. The original film version is very different from the novel. I think the novel has a lot more going on that could be interesting to work with. Not just remaking the original movie. Which I think is the main problem and the reason why [a new film version] was never made. Everybody tried to remake the movie, which itself is dated.