Rob Zombie, rocker and director of the Halloween reboot and sequel, is taking to the ice for his next project. The multi-hyphenate plans to revisit the 1970s Philadelphia Flyers hockey team for a sports feature titled, Broad Street Bullies. The Flyers of this era were a recently installed expansion team that developed a reputation for fielding enforcers and goons while also possessing a skilled group of players that paved the way to two Stanley Cups. With Zombie on board, there's sure to be an up-play on violence in a picture that harkens back to 1977's cult classic, Slap Shot. Hit the jump for more on Broad Street Bullies.
cularly raucous game, Jack Chevalier and Pete Cafone of the Philadelphia Bulletin coined the name "Broad Street Bullies," due to the Flyers' fighting nature and the Broad Street location of their arena, the Spectrum. Deadline reports that Zombie will tackle the Broad Street Bullies project as a mash up of Rocky and Boogie Nights on ice. He went on to say:
“Each character involved is more outrageous than the next. The backdrop of the turbulent year of 1974 is perfect for this ‘stranger than fiction’ sports tale.”
If Zombie's setting it in 74, that should put the team either going into their first Stanley Cup victory or sandwiched in between their consecutive wins. It'll unfortunately be a couple of years too early for the classic game against the Soviet Union in which the Broad Street Bullies proved too rough and aggressive for the Red Machine, forcing the visiting team to leave the ice before the first period had even ended. Here's a look at how the game took a turn:
Zombie purchased the rights to the team's story and has the full cooperation and support of the Flyers' bench. Look for the writer/director's next film, The Lords of Salem to debut sometime later this year.