Once upon a time, there was a movie called Maniac Cop, not many people knew about it, except for a cult following that's pretty big in Asia. When Director Nicolas Winding Refn signs on to produce the new film, the bigger budget will hopefully move the name forward.
In an interview with Daily Grindhouse, William Lustig and Larry Cohen talked a little about the fourth movie in the series and said that Winding Refn has a few ideas for the upcoming project about the psycho with a badge.
The new film is going to be a prequel type story Refn will produce along with Lustig to create a movie that will "maintain the noir-ish comic book feel of the first three films, but with a bigger budget than the others."
There still isn't a director for the film, and even though the project is completely greenlighted yet, it is mostly a done deal. According to DG there are three options for the franchise and the fourth movie.
Option 1: These films have inspired a huge cult-following that is even bigger in Asia than it is here. With such a huge foot-print it’s not going to be difficult to find an exciting director to pick this up… which of course leads us to option 2.
Option 2: Nicolas Winding Refn! After using a little clip from Lustig’s VIGILANTE in DRIVE, it would be cool as hell to see this guy jump behind the wheel and direct this bad boy himself.
Option 3: Nobody knows this series better than Larry Cohen and William Lustig. Lustig hasn’t directed since 1996, Cohen hasn’t been behind the camera since 2006, it would be great to see one of those guys get back into the game. Personally, I think Cohen is more comfortable with a pen these days, but I would be surprised if Lustig hasn’t kicked around the idea of doing this himself.
