Commercial director Joseph Kosinski has signed on to make his feature film debut with a big screen remake of Logan’s Run. Bryan Singer was originally attached to the project, and even got as far as to pre-visualize (think moving 3d storyboards) the project before he got pulled away to make Superman Returns.

Logan’s Run is one of those 1970’s sci-fi movies that clearly wasn’t afraid to be a sci-fi film. Nowadays, there seems to be a lack of movies willing to go all out in the sci-fi department (and the ones that do usually are made for low budgets with crappy scripts for cable networks like the Sci-Fi channel). We live in the Lost and Heroes generation, where high concept sci-fi and fantasy are thought of as the high concept catch for the low concept character stories. Not that this is a bad thing. I’m always the first one to stick up for Lost when the topic comes up. And sure, Logan’s Run had a very human story, but it made little to no concessions in order to reach a more mainstream demographic.

The 1976 film is actually based on a 1967 novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. The plot involved a dystopian future society in which population and the consumption of resources is managed and maintained in equilibrium by the simple expediency of killing everyone who reaches the age of thirty, thus neatly (and inhumanely) avoiding the issue of overpopulation which was of growing concern at the time. Those who try to escape their destiny are known as a “Runners”, and is hunted down by operatives known as Sandmen. The main character of the story is a Sandman named Logan who makes a run for it.

When Singer was attached to the film, I had hoped that they would go with a full-on sci-fi approach. The Hollywood Reporter is saying that the project will take on a low-tech science fiction future closer to the book than the 1976 movie:

“The new film will tackle idea of the “greater good” and people devoting themselves to an ideology blindly, while keeping the novel’s concepts of runners, Sanctuary and gangs outside the system. Kosinski came into Warners with a presentation that included graphic art and animated previsualization that set the look, color, tone and style of the movie he wanted to make.”

I’m still hoping for the best. Check out some of Joseph Kosinski’s commercial work at this link.