Nicolas Winding Refn and John Hyams are adapting William Lustig and Larry Cohen’s cult classic Maniac Cop and its sequels into an event series for HBO. The 1988 film concerns a murderous cop who returns from the dead to do yet more murders. Two sequels followed in which the killer cop came back from coming back from the dead. According to Variety, Refn and Hyams will executive-produce with Nick Hall, Lene Borglum, Frederic Fiore, Alex Gayner, Efe Cakarel, and William Lustig himself. “I’ve always been a devoted admirer of John Hyams. We’ve been talking about a reimagining 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,” Refn said in a statement. “Turning Maniac Cop into a series will allow us to realize our wildest ambitions and to reach an enormous audience through partners HBO and Canal Plus.”
Refn is perhaps best known for his artsy-gritty murder films like Drive and The Neon Demon, while Hyams came to fame through the Universal Soldier series starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Maniac Cop is poised to be the two men’s statement on police violence and cinematic ultraviolence simultaneously. They’re aware of the timely nature of the material. “This show will be an unadulterated, action-packed horror odyssey,” said Refn. “Given the current state of the world, though, Maniac Cop will also be a strong commentary on the decline of civilization.”
