With their successes on both the big and small screen, Captain America: Civil War directors Anthony and Joe Russo are at a point in their careers where the limits will be few and far between for quite a while. It's known that their feature film future will cover both Avengers: Infinity War films, but they'll be taking a TV detour in the meantime to tackle the cult classic thriller The Warriors for an hour-long drama project being set up at Hulu. If you haven't already had "Come out and play-ayyyy!" bouncing in your head for the past ten seconds, I don't know what to say about you.
For this updated take on the titular gang's fight to get back to their home turf, the Russos will work with screenwriter Frank Baldwin, who has a a handful of yet-to-be-made screenplays waiting to hopefully show off his talents. The 1979 film, based on Sol Yurick's novel of the same name, was directed by Walter Hill with all of the necessary low-budget stylization that has kept the film a fan favorite. With Paramount footing the bills on The Warrors, Joe and Anthony Russo will have quite a bit more moolah at their disposal, and they'll be honoring the original film while bringing in their own recipe of pulp-heavy violence and sexuality. The film's producer Lawrence Gordon will be an executive producer for the series.
The latest in a line of popular movies being adapted for television, The Warriors is thankfully a film whose concept is not so rigid with specificity that expansion and modernization are crimes against humanity. In other filmmakers' hands, this might have turned into an overly political look at street violence, but the Russo brothers are just as known for their humor as they are Marvel movies, seeing as how they won an Emmy for directing the Arrested Development pilot. Together and apart, they also helmed episodes of Happy Endings, Community, Agent Carter and more.
Perhaps Walter Hill could get involved on some front to talk out the comic book elements he wanted to bring to the original film, since the Ultimate Director's Cut additions didn't bring his full vision out. The brothers are only tapped to direct the first episode at this point, according to Deadline, but they will still be part of the creative force that will carry on even if Avengers sequels take up their schedule, so every decision counts in the early days.
Years ago, Tony Scott was set to remake The Warriors as another movie, and while there's no doubt that would have been an explosive and wildly entertaining flick (with Denzel Washington naturally in the lead role), but I am actually more interested in a Hulu series being the follow-up iteration of this story, since the narrative can be taken in many more interesting directions in an episodic format. The 2005 video game, which just came out for PS4 download, was a prequel to the film, so fingers crossed the TV show inspires another top-quality tie-in.
This makes yet another "high-profile project aimed at a particular audience" coming to Hulu, which entered the scripted drama game with the Stephen King adaptation 11.22.63 and the Aaron Paul-starring cult drama The Path. They also have the Japanese horror Crow's Blood on the way, as well as the star-studded sci-fi anthology Dimension 404 and the Handmaid's Tale adaptation. Even the service's medical-ish drama Chance, with Hugh Laurie, sounds too particular for mass viewerships. I love it.
No telling when Hulu's The Warriors will get underway, but we will be watching from the rooftops, applying our facepaint.
