ZOMBIELAND DIRECTOR RUBEN FLEISCHER PULLING TRIGGER ON SPY HUNTER

Cue the Peter Gunn theme music! Although it’s been quite a while since we laid hands on an old-school arcade machine or video game console, one of our favorite titles has slowly, slyly gotten one step closer to the big screen: Ruben Fleischer (whose Zombieland we liked so much, we’re willing to overlook 30 Minutes or Less) has signed on to direct and executive produce an adaptation of Spy Hunter, the classic 1983 Bally Midway video game, for Warner Bros. Pictures.

No doubt, making Spy Hunter will allow the director to spray considerably more bullets onscreen than he was ultimately allowed to in Gangster Squad, which Fleischer had to substantially recut in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado, shooting. (Squad has since been pushed from its original release date this September to early next January.)

Spy Hunter has been sliding around the studios for the better part of the last decade, attracting first John Woo and the Rock (let’s consider that combo a bullet dodged, eh?) in 2004 and, later, Paul W.S. Anderson, but the master of the schlockbuster instead opted to remake Death Race 2000 for Paramount in 2007.

Last we’d heard in 2010, there was a Spy Hunter script from Chad St. John, who penned the recently aborted Albert Hughes shoot-‘em-up Motor City, but we’re now told that Fleischer will be seeking new screenwriters to execute his take.

And so: Lit agents, to your Bluetooths! After all, those oil-slick-filled set pieces aren’t going to write themselves.