When ComingSoon.net spoke with him late last year, Zombieland and Gangster Squad director Ruben Fleischer made it pretty clear that he was hoping to make his next project the long-rumored video game adaptation Spy Hunter. Today, Deadline has confirmed that Fleischer will direct the big screen actioner with Carter Blanchard providing the screenplay.
The film will be based on Midway Games’ popular arcade game of the 1980s. The story follows a highly-trained spy hunter whose job it is to eliminate rogue spies when they become liabilities to their governments.
“If I can make any movie, it would be a James Bond movie,” Fleischer explained in December. “I’ve always loved the genre but I don’t think they’ll hire an American to direct a James Bond movie, I’ve been told, so for me, ‘Spy Hunter’ is an opportunity to create a new spy franchise. It sounds silly but that was my favorite video game when I was a kid and it had a great title and a great theme song, but there’s no real other associations that people have with it other than a cool car, so I feel like there’s a lot of room for us to invent a new character and a new series. I think just the Spy Hunter that is the most bad-ass spy who hunts down rogue spies is a really cool launch pad for an idea and I hope that we can bring it to life.”
The project was previously set up at Universal, where John Woo and Paul W.S. Anderson were formerly attached to direct at various points and Dwayne Johnson was once attached to star.
