Timothy Olyphant to redo George Romero horror The Crazies

Timothy Olyphant (Go, Live Free or Die Hard) is attached to star in Overture Film’s remake of The Crazies, the 1973 George A. Romero horror film that Breck Eisner (Sahara) is directing.

The low-budget cult classic The Crazies originally starred Lane Carroll, Will MacMillan, Harold Wayne Jones, Lloyd Hollar, Lynn Lowry, Richard Liberty, Richard France, Harry Spillman and Will Disney and revolved around the inhabitants of a small Kansas town who are beset by a virus that causes death and permanent insanity in those infected, after a plane crash releases a secret biological weapon into the water supply. The military steps in, attempting to contain the killer man-made virus. Olyphant will play the town’s sheriff in the new film.

Scott Kosar, who wrote The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes and Ray Wright, who penned Pulse and the upcoming Case 39, wrote the screenplay for the new film, which Romero will executive produce.

The Crazies is scheduled to hit theaters on September 25th 2009.

Film Fetish Trivia: Breck Eisner is attached to direct the upcoming Flash Gordon comic adaptation, due in theaters in 2010. Eisner is currently in pre-production on The Creature from the Black Lagoon remake for Universal Pictures, which is set to be in theaters sometime in 2009.

Below is a trailer for the original The Crazies. Everybody blows each other away in the original. No word on how gunplay factors into the new film.