Zombieland Director Ruben Fleischer Gets Behind The Wheel For SpyHunter

Director Ruben Fleischer got his feature career off to a great start making both Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less, but his most recent venture hasn't had quite the same kind of success. Gangster Squad, which was released in January following a multi-month bump in the schedule following the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, received a very tepid response from both critics and audiences, the movie only making $87 million globally on a $60 million budget. But Fleischer is a talented guy who will likely rebound - and it could be with a new video game adaptation.

Deadline is reporting that Warner Bros. has attached the filmmaker to direct SpyHunter, a new action movie based on the classic 1980s arcade game that was given a reboot on the Playstation 2 back in 2001. Part of the "vehicular combat" genre of gaming, the series has players drive around in James Bond-esque supercars blowing up bad guys and avoiding civilians. Carter Blanchard, who wrote the upcoming Ringan Ledwidge sci-fi film Glimmer, is scripting the adaptation, while Dan Lin (Sherlock Holmes) and Roy Lee (The Woman In Black) will produce. The most recent title in the franchise, Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run (which actually featured Dwayne Johnson as the main character), was released in 2006.

The site notes that this isn't the first time that studios have tried to get a SpyHunter movie off the ground, and previous versions of the project have featured directors like John Woo and Paul W.S. Anderson (Johnson was actually going to star in a Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run movie before the film was trapped in development hell). We'll have to wait and see how this attempt pans out for the studio, but the hirings suggest that they know exactly what they want.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.