Universal Pictures Home Entertainment(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, producing Roger Corman’s 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.
Roger Corman’s Death Race 2050, which stars Arrow‘s Manu Bennett, comes out on download, DVD, and Blu-ray on Tuesday.
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