Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — In 1975, beloved low-budget filmmaker Roger Corman strapped a pre-Kung Fu David Carradine and a pre-Rocky Slyvester Stallone into some deadly-looking cars for the cult classic Death Race 2000. Now, at 90 years young, Corman — credited with launching the directing careers of the likes of Ron Howard, Francis Ford Coppola, and James Cameron — just got behind the wheel again for another lap: Death Race 2050.
In the original Death Race 2000, the year 2000 was envisioned as a dystopian future in which the national pastime is a race features drivers mowing down pedestrians for points. The movie was remade with Jason Statham in 2008 as Death Race, which spawned a 2010 sequel starring The Walking Dead‘s Lauren Cohan, but neither captured the humor of the original, Corman tells ABC News.
“I started thinking about that,” he says. “And so I called [the producers] and they…said, ‘Why don’t you make one, and put the humor back in, and let’s put the killing of the pedestrians, and a little bit of the social comment and so forth, as back in the original…”
In their version, Malcolm McDowell plays a strongman U.S. president with a very familiar bouffant-like hairdo. “The Donald Trump thing was not in the script,” Corman explaines”It was just an idea we had while shooting during the primary season — to give him the hairdo of Donald Trump…we thought it might be funny — we never dreamed he’d actually be president.”
“Just by a fluke, or stroke of luck, I think we have the first picture out with Donald Trump as President of the United States,” Corman laughs. (AUDIO IS ABC 1-ON-1)
Death Race 2050, which stars Arrow’s Manu Bennett, comes out on download, DVD, and Blu-ray on Tuesday.
Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
