Stallone’s Challenge

If producer David Brown can get “The Midnight Club” going, co-producer Sylvester Stallone will star as New York’s best detective--in a wheelchair.

“The movie will have state-of-the-art, wheelchair, hand-to-hand combat,” Brown tells us. “It’s about a New York police detective determined to extinguish a crime overlord. . . . In his single-minded desire to wipe out this man, the detective is paralyzed from the waist down and almost killed.

“Stallone goes from a man of intense activity to a wheelchair, and the action continues from the wheelchair.”

The script, by John Herzfeld, is based on a book by James B. Patterson, former CEO of the J. Walter Thompson USA ad agency. The movie, to be financed by Stallone’s Carolco Pictures as a Tri-Star release, is expected to start shooting early next year. First up for Stallone: the comedy “Oscar,” which begins shooting this fall.