Nicolas Winding Refn Resurrects Maniac Cop At Last

written by Craig Ellison

May 23, 2026 11:24 am

Nicolas Winding Refn Resurrects Maniac Cop At Last — Image credit: Legion-Media

After more than a decade of false starts, the filmmaker’s long-gestating passion project is finally back on track.

So, Nicolas Winding Refn – the bloke who gave us 'Drive' and made Ryan Gosling look like a silent, hammer-wielding heartthrob on LA's mean streets – is finally pressing ahead with his take on 'Maniac Cop'. If you know anything about Refn, you’ll know he’s not really one for playing it safe in Hollywood. After 'Drive' exploded, he could’ve taken the easy route, cashed in, and churned out superhero sequels like everyone else. Instead, he stuck to making niche oddities – 'Only God Forgives', 'The Neon Demon', all that ultra-stylised weirdness. Fair play, honestly.

Anyway, Refn’s been talking about doing a new 'Maniac Cop' for what feels like ages now – we’re talking the best part of a decade. The original 'Maniac Cop', if it’s not already in your VHS horror rotation, was a late ‘80s cult classic with a brilliantly cheap premise: disgraced copper comes back from the dead and gets a bit murdery, much to the dismay of basically everyone in New York. The 1988 version was directed by William Lustig and it’s got that seedy, B-movie sleaze you just don’t get anymore.

The 'Maniac Cop' Saga: A Quick Rundown

2015: Refn first teased the idea of rebooting 'Maniac Cop'. It sounded wild, but Hollywood is the land of eternal maybes, so no one held their breath.
From there, updates turned to tumbleweeds – the “will he, won’t he” type stories you forget about until someone brings them up on a podcast.
2019: Suddenly, word leaks out that the project’s morphing into a TV series for HBO, which seemed…unexpected? Then, nothing really came of it. Pandemic hit, strikes happened, the usual industry headaches that send even the best ideas straight into development limbo.
2024: Out of what feels like nowhere, Refn’s just had his latest film, 'Her Private Hell', debut at Cannes. (Side note: That’s his first feature film since 'The Neon Demon' back in 2016 – he’s mostly been busy with TV stuff, like 'Too Old to Die Young' and 'Copenhagen Cowboy' on streaming.)
Off the back of the good buzz for 'Her Private Hell', it’s now official: 'Maniac Cop' is up next. Refn confirmed it himself on Instagram, just in case any doubters remained.

Now, don’t expect a straightforward remake. According to Deadline, Refn’s version is being cooked up 'through a kaleidoscope of characters, from cop to common criminal.' So it’ll probably be less 'cop with grudge goes on rampage' and more a sprawling, messy, paranoid deep-dive into why everyone’s terrified of a killer in uniform. Is the titular Maniac Cop an actual person? Is it all a bit supernatural? Who knows at this stage, but the promise is ‘paranoia leads to social disorder as a city wrestles with the mystery of the exterminator in blue – is he mere mortal, or a supernatural force?’ Pretty on-brand for Refn, honestly.

'The concept has always appealed to me,' says Refn. 'In today’s political and social climate, the iconography of Maniac Cop alone provokes an immediate, uneasy reaction. I’ve been watching it all unfold while constructing this project in the shadows… waiting. Now, that moment has finally arrived. The time has come to unveil a radical new vision where there is no protection, no safety net, only mayhem…'

Refn’s never exactly done subtle, so the idea of tackling 'Maniac Cop' after everything we’ve all been through in the past few years is, at the very least, timely. It’s also exactly the sort of controversial, conversation-starting project the original always threatened to be but never quite managed. If he can finally get this thing made, it could be one of the most bonkers genre films of the next decade—assuming, of course, it doesn’t spiral back into limbo again.