The latest director to try and get a remake of Logan's Run off the ground has some news about the project.

The problem is that it's not good news at all. Nicolas Winding Refn, the director behind indie noir thrillers Drive and Only God Forgives, got on board the long-in-development new adaptation of William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's classic novel back in 2011 and brought his favorite actor, Ryan Gosling, along as the star.

But Gosling left the project last year, and now Refn has told Twitchfilm that he doesn't see it happening:

It’s dead as dead can be. It’s a great shame but I realized a couple of things. I was so in love with the original that I think I was disillusioned by the fact that if I made a remake I would be closer to the original, I would be part of the original more than any other, and I realized that that was a lie. That was illusion. It wouldn’t be like that. And also if I was going to make a $100 or $200 million movie, and trade off my creative freedom for that price, it needed to be something that was going to outweigh that loss. Because at the same time I’m very lucky to be able to make the films I make, and to exchange that for a larger canvas really needs to feel like the right swap. Logan’s Run just wasn’t it at the end.

On the other hand, Refn added that he is still working on a Barbarella TV series (which has also been in the works for what seems like forever) and that he "was able to take one of my ideas (for Logan's Run) and put them into Barbarella." We can't imagine what that could be, but we'll find out if and when Barbarella itself gets off the ground.

In the meantime, Refn joins a long list of filmmakers, including Bryan Singer (X-Men), Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion) and James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) who have taken a ride on Carousel -- aka the Logan's Run development process -- and did not get renewed.

There is a small sliver of hope, though: last June, BioShock creator Ken Levine was hired to take another whack at a Logan's Run screenplay. But with no director and no star attached, we have to wonder if the lifeclock has just gone black on the whole thing.

(via Giant Freakin' Robot)