An Easy Rider reboot is in the works from producer Maurice Fadida (The Trial of the Chicago 7), Variety reports. Fadida’s Kodiak Pictures, Defiant Studios’ Eric B. Fleischman, and the Jean Boulle Group have rights to the film, which originally premiered in 1969 via Columbia Pictures.
Written by Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Terry Southern, the original Easy Rider starred Hopper and Fonda as two bikers who travel the Southwest on the money from a cocaine deal. Known as a landmark document of 1960s American counterculture, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for a young Jack Nicholson.
According to Variety, the producers behind the new Easy Rider are looking for writers and directors capable of updating the film for modern times, with the Rocky/Creed dynamic as a guide for the adaptation. “Our goal is to build upon the counterculture and freedom narrative the original left us with, and give the youth of today a film that pays serious attention to their own countercultures and challenges,” Fadida told the trade. “What the young viewers of today are experiencing in their everyday lives may seem crazy to older generations, but it can very well become the societal norm, as was the case with the cultural shift of the late 1960s. We are hoping to play a part in that shift.”