Back in 2012, Nicolas Winding Refn let word slip that he’s overseeing what will either be a remake or a new chapter in the **Maniac Cop **franchise which most people had, not without cause, written off as finished. After three years of silence, we know who will be tackling the job: director John Hyams and writer Ed Brubaker.
The gleefully scuzzy **Maniac Cop **series, just in case you were unaware, belongs to the Larry Cohen school of genre exploitation, and is about an undead police officer on a killing spree (three of them, ultimately). The 1988 original stars two famous chins in Bruce Campbell and Robert Z'Dar. Z'dar continued on his maniacal path through both sequels; Robert Davi did the investigating in the second and third instalments; and part three (Badge Of Silence) has Jackie Earl Haley in it. All three were produced by Cohen and directed by William Lustig (with some co-directing assistance on the third from Joel Soisson).
News of the fresh development arrived at Fantastic Fest in Austin, with Twitch picking up the word from Hyams, the man behind recent **Universal Soldier **sequels Regeneration and Day Of Reckoning. It certainly seems like Refn has the right sort of team in place, with the big question being whether anyone can be found to replicate the Maniac Cop himself, Z’Dar, for the new movie.