The Warriors is a timeless cult classic. Directed by Walter Hill and released in 1979, the film follows a street gang – the titular Warriors – as they attempt to survive the journey from the Bronx to Coney Island after being framed for a murder. It’s a grimy, violent and low budget pic, but the various gangs, the cool soundtrack and energetic visual style have earned it a decent amount of kudos over the years. And now, we’re hearing from our sources – the same ones who told us an Aladdin sequel was in development before it was confirmed – that The Warriors is set to be remade.
We don’t have any further details on the project at this early, early stage, but there’s been rumblings for a while now that Paramount were eager to do something with the property. Director Tony Scott had planned a remake of the film at one point set in then modern-day LA, taking inspiration from the LA riots and with the Crips and Bloods taking the place of the Hi-Hats and Baseball Furies. He explained that his vision of the remake would be as follows:
“The same story, but we’re reconstructing the family, reconstructing the characters, and I’m doing it in L.A. The original was in New York and everything went upwards; L.A. goes [length-wise]. And instead of 30 gang members, there’s going to be 3,000 or 5,000.”
Scott’s untimely death put paid to that project, of course, but Crank and Gamer director Mark Neveldine also expressed interest in remaking The Warriors in 2015, saying:
We just feel like we’re the perfect guys for that job; baseball bats, roller-skates, gangs, the heightened world. We know there’s been fear at some studios like “We make this movie today and gangs are gonna go wild!” And it’s like “Whatever.” You do it in Crank style, people are just gonna laugh and have fun. … We would set it, obviously, five minutes in the future, and we’d really love to build these flamboyant gangs and have fun with them, and have a heightened sense of action and bring all the things that we’ve learned and stolen from Rodriguez and Tarantino and other great directors and put it on the screen.
There were also rumors in 2016 that Anthony and Joe Russo were going to develop a TV show based on the property, too, but that doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere.
Given a choice, I’d much rather a take like Neveldine’s. I mean, what’s the point in remaking The Warriors if you’re going to ditch the imaginative street gangs? They’re the most memorable part of the movie. Let’s just hope that whoever gets the job takes the best bits from the Walter Hill classic and updates them for the modern day.
