It’s time to go find The Lost Boys once more.
An all-new Lost Boys reboot feature film is in the works at Warner Bros. with several talents attached, as the company moves past a series of failed attempts to revive the franchise through a drama series on The CW.
The new feature, described as a “brand-new, reimagined take on the 1980s teen vampire classic,” will be written by Randy McKinnon, who is already on the Warner fold writing DC Films’ upcoming Static Shock for the studio.
Noah Jupe and Jaeden Martell are attached to star, while The End of the F—ing World’s Jonathan Entwistle will direct. Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Fred Berger will produce via Automatik, and Zac Frognowski and Josh Glick will executive produce.
The original The Lost Boys, released in 1987 and directed by Joel Schumacher, tells a tale of two brothers, Michael and Sam Emerson, who move to a small California beach town that, they soon discover, is being terrorized by vampires. There, they most notably run across a mysterious stylish biker gang and the Frog Brothers, a pair of (scene-stealer) comic book-loving brothers who claim to be vampire hunters.
The film’s remarkable ensemble featured Corey Haim, Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, Jami Gertz, Corey Feldman, Dianne Wiest, Edward Herrmann, Billy Wirth, Brooke McCarter, Alex Winter, Jamison Newlander, and Barnard Hughes. Lost Boys became an instant classic and was a critical and commercial success, being fondly remembered to this day for, among infinite other qualities, its memorable cast and an iconic soundtrack.
Two direct-to-DVD sequels starring Feldman as Edgar Frog were released in the 2000s. Lost Boys: The Tribe and Lost Boys: The Thirst, however, fell tremendously short off of its predecessor’s groundbreaking success, and the franchise kept stale for the next decade.
A television series adaptation has been in the works at The CW since 2016. The initial pitch, by writer Rob Thomas, was a wildly different take on the property seeing each season be set in a different decade and following the immortal lives of the titular vampires. With a seven-season haul in mind, the initial year would be set during the Summer of Love in 1967.
That version did not move forward, with a redevelopment, which was more of a traditional reboot of the classic story, getting traction by the hands of Heather Mitchell in early 2019. A pilot starring Tyler Posey was greenlit, but the network passed on it and decided to retool the project once more. A second pilot was filmed and was still up for consideration by The CW up until the feature film entered development.