Nicolas Winding Refn New ‘Maniac Cop’ Is Finally Set to Stalk the Streets
He’s back on duty, and audiences will again “have the right to remain silent… forever!” Cameras are reportedly ready to roll on a new Maniac Cop film from Neon Demon director Nicolas Winding Refn after many stops and starts over the years. This comes from an inside source that couldn’t be more intimately tied to the property — the director of the original, William Lustig.
Lustig told Icons of Fright recently (via Bloody Disgusting), “Nic has it as his next project, that will shoot in the fall.” The filmmaker, whose career was minted during the 80s slasher boom, also elaborated on why the reboot went sideways as a TV series. It all boils down to a controversial merger that’s been grinding gears for half a decade.
“What happened with HBO was, HBO got sold to Discovery, and Discovery — after they’d spent over a million dollars developing the scripts for the series — Discovery says, ‘We’re not in the Maniac Cop business,’” Lustig explained. “They gave all the scripts back to us, so we didn’t have to pay a turnaround, so that was it with HBO. Now it’s moving ahead. I can’t announce the company, but it will become known.”
Lustig added that the project is something Refn has wanted to get out of his system. “It’s sort of like one of these things that’s bouncing around in your head, and you wanna just get it out. I think Nic is at that point. This thing had so many fits and starts. It’s moving ahead and expected to start shooting [in] the fall,” he said.
The original Maniac Cop was produced by schlockmeister Larry Cohen and starred Bruce Campbell, Tom Atkins, and Robert Z’Dar. A presumed-dead officer, Matt Cordell (Z’Dar), goes on a killing spree that an adulterous cop (Campbell) is framed for.
Captain America writer Ed Brubaker was attached as the screenwriter, but it is unclear if he is still involved. Late in 2023, he revealed that the series was benched because all the police brutality and riots in the news made HBO nervous, and hence, Brubaker was unsure if the project would be revived in any form.
But before anyone says action on the next Maniac Cop, Refn has a thriller ready to release at the end of the year titled Her Private Hell. Set in Tokyo, it stars Sophie Thatcher (Companion) and Dougray Scott (Batwoman).
