What If...? – Warner Bros. / Silver / Weed Road / Bad Hat Harry (Nicolas Winding Refn's Logan's Run)

A re-adaptation of William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's classic sci-fi novel Logan's Run, about a dystopic Malthusianism future society in which both population and the consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by requiring the death of everyone reaching a certain age, has been in the works at Warner Bros. Pictures since the mid-1990's, with a variety of writers, producers, and directors coming and going on the project, including the likes of Skip Woods, Bryan Singer, Joel Silver, Akiva Goldsman, Simon Kinberg, Greg Berlanti, Ken Levine, Peter Craig, Ryan J. Condal, Carl Erik Rinsch, Robert Schwentke, Christopher McQuarrie, Michael Dougherty, James McTeigue, and Joseph Kosinski among many, many others. One of the great what-ifs of the development process was a version that was to have been helmed by visionary director Nicolas Winding Refn, from a screenplay adapted by Alex Garland, Andrew Baldwin, and Will Beall, with Ryan Gosling starring as Logan 5 — the Sandman charged with enforcing the rule, as he tracks down and kills citizens who "run" from society's lethal demands, only to end up "running" himself — and Rose Byrne cast in the role of Jessica 6. It was to be Gosling's third collaboration with Refn following their work together on Drive and Only God Forgives. Refn was an obsessive fan of the initial 1976 film adaptation and planned on his version being more faithful to the source novel. However, in the fall of 2013, Refn announced that his tenure on the project had ended, stating that the quality of the original film kept getting in the way and that he didn't want to trade off creative freedom for a big budget. Follow me and ponder the question, "What if...?"

Music: "West Coast's Favorite Bank" – Cliff Martinez (Hotel Artemis)