Posted 03.22.12 by Ryan Sure, Midnight Run came out in 1988, but why not try to turn it into a franchise 20-odd years later?
Screenwriter Tim Dowling (Just Go with It, Role Models) was hired two years ago to write a sequel script that would allow Robert De Niro to reprise his role as bounty hunter Jack Walsh. Now the sequel may have a director in Brett Ratner (Tower Heist, the Rush Hour trilogy). Deadline reports that Ratner is in talks to direct the sequel for Universal, which has also hired screenwriters David Elliot and Paul Lovett (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Four Brothers) to rewrite Dowling's script.
De Niro is still attached to the project, but it's unlikely Charles Grodin — who played the embezzling mob accountant (Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas) Walsh escorted to L.A. in the first movie — will step out of retirement to return.
This isn't the first attempt to create a Midnight Run franchise. Universal produced a trilogy of TV movies in 1994 — Another Midnight Run, Midnight Runaround, Midnight Run for Your Life — which starred Christopher McDonald in the De Niro role.
Ironically, Ratner is also directing another movie with ties to a mid-1990s Universal TV movie — Hercules and the Amazon Women, which became the basis of the long-running Hercules show that starred Kevin Sorbo. Ratner's upcoming big-screen Hercules, however, is for MGM. Based on Steve Moore's 2008 graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars, that movie will star Dwayne Johnson and start shooting in New Zealand this October.