News has officially broken on a creative team for an upcoming film based on the popular 1990s video game franchise Duke Nukem. Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg, creators of the popular Karate Kid revival series Cobra Kai, are set to produce this film. Legendary Entertainment has picked up the film rights to the project from Gearbox.
No writer or director is currently attached to this iteration of the project and an active search is currently underway. Though it might not be a surprise to see at least some creative involvement from the trio of producers based on their previous line of work. Whether that be the three of them creating Cobra Kai, Heald writing Hot Tub Time Machine, or Hurwitz and Schlossberg helming numerous projects in the Harold & Kumar franchise.
The Duke Nukem video game franchise began in 1991 and has officially made over $1 billion throughout its various games. Duke Nukem follows the adventures of the titular hero in various pastiches of 1980s action movies with him serving as the stereotypical protagonist based on films of the era dealing with a mass alien invasion within Los Angeles. Their games were a major part in introducing the mainstream success of first-person video games within the industry.
With the popularity of the video games and their basis within over-the-top action movies, Duke Nukem has been a long-sought-after film adaptation. However, it’s consistently been within “development hell” despite numerous attempts to green-light the project. Most recently, Gearbox had an adaptation in the works with Paramount Pictures that would have had John Cena in the lead role, but it ultimately fizzled out over time.
It remains to be seen what direction will be taken with this film and if this trio of producers and Legendary Entertainment will finally be able to get this film off the ground and into production.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
