The Logan’s Run remake is one of those science fiction properties that seems to have been in the works, under one creative team or another, damn near since the original movie came out back in 1976. Since the early ’90s, various versions of the project have come and gone, with people like Joel Silver, Bryan Singer, Alex Garland, and Nicolas Winding Refn, all having their turn at bat. In August 2007, it was director Joseph Kosinski’s turn, with screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton (Children of Men) on board to write the script. Unfortunately, just like all the others, we never got to see his version of Logan’s Run. But thanks to this concept art, we can see a bit of what might have been.

With Dawn of the Planet of the Apes proving that the 2011 Rise was no fluke, it’s clear that all it takes to revive a languishing sci-fi property is the right combination of passion, talent, and vision. (And a decade or so to forget about any terrible Tim Burton versions.) So with Caesar staging a conquest of the box office ($103 million worldwide so far), we here at GFR put our heads together to come up with other 1970s science movies primed for a resurrection. Some of them are cult classics, some of them are forgettable, and some of them are downright lamentable, but they’ve all got at least a small kernel of potential to become something awesome…if they can find the right people to guide them.

Hit the link to see our first pick!

If you live in the San Francisco area, or can get there by this weekend, you can take part in a geeky event that should put a smile on any science fiction fan’s face. This Saturday, February 8, San Fran will become the nameless city from the cult classic 1976 sci-fi film Logan’s Run (and the William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson book it was based on). And regardless of how old you are in real life, if you participate in this event, you just turned 30 and your number is up…

If you’re not boned up on your Logan’s Run backstory, it involves a seemingly utopian future society where everyone lives crazy, hedonistic lives…up until they turn 30. Then they have to submit to a ceremony called “Carrousel” [sic], which is a fancy way of saying “getting fucking vaporized.” The system was designed as a reaction to overpopulation and limited resources within the domed city — you get three awesome decades, then it’s night-night time. Understandably, however, there are some citizens who aren’t on board for that plan at all, so they run. Logan 5 (Michael York) is a “Sandman,” tasked with catching Runners and killing them or bringing them back. But after Logan’s lifetime is cut short, he’s forced to become a Runner himself, and go in search of the mythical “Sanctuary” where Runners can live out their natural lives in peace.

Love him or hate him, there’s no question that Harlan Ellison can write. Over the years he’s served up classic speculative fiction stories such as “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” “Shatterday,” and “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” He’s written for TV series such as Star Trek — his original script for “City on the Edge of Forever” earned him a Hugo and a Writers Guild Award — The Outer Limits, and the 1980s resurrection of The Twilight Zone. Non-hardcore fans of Ellison may not know that he worked extensively in television throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, writing for shows as varied as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Flying Nun, and even the TV adaptation of Logan’s Run. It’s that latter one that’s of most interest to us here at GFR, and you can find more about it in the newly released Harlan Ellison’s Brain Movies: Volume 5.

The Brain Movies series has been collecting tons of Harlan’s rare and little-seen stuff for some time now, and die-hard fans will definitely find plenty of drool-worthy Christmas ideas over at HarlanEllisonBooks.com. Volume 5 includes Harlan’s storyline for “The Crypt,” an episode of the 1977 – 1978 Logan’s Run TV series, based on the film from the year earlier and the book by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson from a decade earlier. It’s the first time Ellison’s “Crypt” storyline has ever seen print. Here’s the episode synopsis from IMDb: “The runners find an underground room with six survivors of the nuclear holocaust cryogenically frozen. A series of earthquakes complicate efforts to rescue the frozen humans.”

Sometimes I love the internet. While it can be a depressing place — especially if you spend any time reading YouTube comments — it can also help spur creativity in ways you wouldn’t expect. It allows cool ideas to proliferate worldwide and challenges other people to riff on them. Today’s example, “premakes.” The idea is simple: you pick a modern movie, then imagine what a trailer for it might look like if it had come out in an earlier era. Up above you can see the answer to the question, “What if Ghostbusters had come out in 1954?”

Director Nicolas Winding Refn won me over in a serious way with 2011’s Drive, a movie that bore almost no resemblance whatsoever to its advertising campaign, but in a good way. (For the inverse of that, watch Branded.) And while his continued man-crush on Ryan Gosling with Only God Forgives mainly just left me drowsy, I’m still intrigued to see anything the guy puts together. Now the director has provided an update on the two science fiction projects he’s been attached to in recent years, and it’s definitely a good news, bad news situation.

Actually, it’s a bad news, bad news situation if you ask me, but that’s only because I’m still recovering from the lingering psychic damage I suffered from forcing myself to watch Barbarella the last time I wrote about this whole thing. See, I’d never seen Barbarella, but when it was announced last summer that Refn was turning the cult classic into a TV show, I did the good journalistic thing and gave it a spin in the old Blu-ray player. It…did not go well. But my disdain for and occasional involuntary twitches caused by Barbarella are beside the point. Even I have to concede that, if the universe absolutely has to have a Barbarella show, I’m more interested to see one overseen by Refn (and written by the Bond guys) than I would be with many other creative teams.