Writer Ed Brubaker Refuses To Remain Silent About The Maniac Cop Remake

Steve Barton   |  

May 15, 2014

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Never one to hate all remakes equally, I’m quite excited about the Maniac Cop redo. With original trilogy director William Lustig producing and Only God Forgives director Nic Winding Refn also sitting behind-the-scenes, it’s hard to cast a cynical eye on the project.

I was happy last week when it was announced that comic writer Ed Brubaker (“Criminal”, “Captain America”) would pen Matt Cordell’s latest adventure. While we wait for the director to be announced at Cannes, Brubaker sat down with Fangoria to talk a little bit more about the new Maniac Cop.

I wrote a lot of drafts. There’s definitely some intentional humor here and there that’s really dark. I think how it’s shot and the sound design is going to be so important to how scary it is or isn’t. And you know, the director that signed on is really amazing, so I’m really psyched. Like me, he’s really a fan of the 70s and 80s horror movies, like the John Carpenter stuff. I hope it feels somewhat modern, but also feels like a throwback to that era that it was the stepchild of, initially. It was an interesting job.

Purist fans of the original movies will be happy to know that even Larry Cohen had some input in the script.

Definitely when I started talking to Refn, I didn’t expect that he was going to offer me a monster movie. So, it was definitely not what I was expecting, but then I realized that I fucking love movies like that, so why not try one and then bring whatever my voice actually is into it. It was a big collaborative process. I worked with Nic and Bill Lustig for a while throwing out lines and ideas and stuff. Then for the last six-eight months I’ve been working on it steadily and having weekly Skype sessions with Refn about the drafts. It was pretty collaborative process. At one point, we even got a bunch of ideas from Larry Cohen. It was a really fun job and a great learning experience for screenwriting. I jokingly told Refn that I went through screenwriting bootcamp with him. I’d been doing it for a couple years and thought I knew the ropes, but now I know that getting a feature ready for production is a fuck-ton of work.

Considering Brubaker’s body of work, along with the collaborative process for this remake, I have a hard time finding anything negative to say about it. Now who will they hire to compose a new version of the Maniac Cop Rap?

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