The 80's Cult Hit 'Remo Williams' Getting The Reboot Treatment!

[Brian Damage]

"The Dark Knight” producer Charles Roven and “Transporter” producer Steve Chasman are teaming up to produce “The Destroyer,” a franchise vehicle that brings back ’80s action hero Remo Williams. The pair have set up the project at Columbia.

Charley and Vlas Parlapanides, who are penning the action epic “War of Gods” for Relativity, are on board to write the screenplay.

Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir wrote the initial batch of “Destroyer” adventure tomes, which centered on Williams, a New Jersey cop convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Williams is sentenced to the electric chair, but his death is faked so he can be reborn as the vigilante character the Destroyer, joining a top-secret assassin squad set up by the government to operate outside the bounds of the law.

With the help of an Asian assassin named Chiun, Williams also then wreaks havoc on the criminal underworld as well as on those who framed him.

Murphy and Sapir wrote scores of “Destroyer” paperbacks in the 1970s and ’80s, with other writers eventually taking over scribe duties. New installments of the series — more than 100 have been written all told — continue through this decade.


Ace Media, a joint venture between Roven’s Atlas Entertainment and Chasman’s Current Entertainment, is producing “Destroyer,” with Atlas’ Steve Alexander exec producing. Atlas has an overall deal with Sony.

Atlas and Columbia are in control of rights to the entire series; this pic, however, is an origin story that will center on the first book.

Murphy and Sapir’s novels gained big-screen credibility when they were turned into “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins,” an Orion feature from 1985 that starred Fred Ward as the title character. A television movie continuing the saga was later produced for ABC.

The new project continues a trend of reboots or other updates of 1980s action franchises, a group that includes last year’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and MGM’s “Robocop” and “Red Dawn” remakes.

Among other projects, Roven is producing the upcoming fantasy-adventure “Season of the Witch,” while Chasman is on board to produce the serial-killer thriller “Blitz.”

In addition to “Gods,” the Parlapanides brothers, repped by WME, are penning the manga adaptation “Death Note” for Warners.

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