Before Roland Emmerich began destroying all of the world's most recognizable landmarks, he gave us UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, a sci-fi action film which starred Jean-Claude Van Damme as Luc Deveraux, a U.S. Army soldier who was killed in 1969 during the Vietnam War but was brought back to life decades later as part of a secret military project called the "Universal Soldier" program. With his memory erased, Deveraux struggles to regain his former humanity as well as deal with Sgt. Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren), his psychotic former friend who has also been brought back. The film spawned a theatrical sequel as well as a series of direct-to-video spin-offs over the years, but it seems that the franchise is due for a potential comeback.
THE EQUALIZER screenwriter Richard Wenk spoke with Discussing Film recently and revealed that he's a week away from turning in a script which will be a reimagining of UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. "I will say that I’m just finishing up a re-imagining — let’s be clear about this, it’s not a remake and it is not a redo — but it is a re-imagining of a movie called Universal Soldier," Wenk said. "Very much like ‘The Equalizer,’ it’s the title that inspired me and not the movies…I’m just about to finish (the script) and turn it in this week." For those of you hoping for a faithful redo, Richard Wenk hints that his take on the franchise may be UNIVERSAL SOLDIER in name only and will only focus on one character.
I had seen the movies and enjoyed them for what they were… but I didn't see those stories and that world to be relevant today, but I thought that the title Universal Solider and where we're going in terms of science, and also having something to say about war, would be interesting, so we sort of just took a whole other tact, and [are] hopefully building it to have this great franchise character. One, singular.
Richard Wenk has another big project on his upcoming slate, a film revolving around Spider-Man villain Kraven the Hunter for Sony Pictures. Wenk spoke about the film earlier today and mentioned that his first draft of the film will include Spider-Man, something the recently released VENOM was lacking.