For those of you too young to remember, Duke Nukem was a video game property about a wisecracking Schwarzenegger-type action hero who killed aliens and spat out one-liners. The game franchise kicked off in 1991, and the first two were fine, but after Doom came out in ’93, they released Duke Nukem 3D, which was really where it blew up. It became one of the great pre-Quake first-person shooters of all time, doing almost $1 billion in game sales (for a lot of hormonally-overwhelmed boys like myself in ’96, the game’s biggest boon was that there was a scene in a strip club, where, if you clicked the right button, the strippers would you show you their boobs while Nukem rasped, “Shake it, baby” and handed them money — see below). Anyway, where was I going with this…oh, right, they’re making a Duke Nukem movie, apparently!
Yup, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are going to make a Duke Nukem movie, and will produce via their production company Counterbalance Entertainment. Backing the project is Legendary Entertainment, best known for the Godzilla, Dune, and Hangover movies. Also on board is Jean Julien Baronnet (Assassin’s Creed) of Marla Studios, which specializes in game adaptations.
While I’m certainly not chomping at the bit to see a Duke Nukem movie — honestly, if we’re going this route, I’d rather they just finally gave us a Lobo movie — I think the Cobra Kai team is a smart match for it. They took a seemingly-cheesy ’80s franchise concept and turned it into several seasons of TV for a new generation, so hey, maybe a seemingly-gross ’90s video game franchise concept could have legs under their creative guidance.
More on this as it comes, but for now, enjoy downloading a weird, not-quite-right version of Duke Nukem 3D off of the Internet and reliving your stupid youth.