Useless but essential pop culture tidbits and trivia from the worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror that will not help you with your American Idol audition.
Surely all Science Fiction and Fantasy fans know about the phenomena that followed when the release of Star Wars in 1977 changed the course of film-making and laid the groundwork for Science Fiction’s appeal to expand beyond just its geeky fan-base. But did you know that one year prior to that the Logan’s Run movie sparked a mini-frenzy of its own?
The movie which starred Michael York and Jenny Agutter and was based on the William F. Nolan/ George Clayton Johnson novel hit the theaters in the Summer of 1976, one year after Jaws and one year prior to Star Wars. The film had a decent budget for a genre film at the time (around $9 million) and pulled in a healthy Box Office tally ($25 million) and it definitely energized Science Fiction fandom. This did not go unnoticed either as multiple attempts to capitalize on the film’s popularity sprang up very quickly after it filled seats at the theaters throughout the Summer. Marvel Comics rushed out a comic book adaptation of the movie which covered the story from the film for five issues then carried on into new adventures (for only two additional issues, though). William F. Nolan penned two sequels to the original novel with the first, Logan’s World, coming out in 1977 when the film was still fresh in people’s minds. And one year after the movie’s release, a television series adaption even appeared on CBS (though it only lasted fourteen episodes).
Logan’s Run was all the rage for a while with fans even staging “runs” as popular events at local conventions. But that fire died down quickly once Star Wars shifted fandom in a new direction in the Summer of 1977, and little is heard about the Logan’s Run film or books these days (the books are even out of print). There has been talk for years about a remake of the movie with Bryan Singer attached to it at one point. But that appears stalled in production hell at this point, so we have to go back to the original movie or books for now if we want to revisit Logan’s 22nd century dystopia (and you can read Johnny Jay’s review of the audio book at this link).
Review of Logan’s Run on BR | William F. Nolan
September 25th, 2010 at 19:53