The original film helped cement John Travolta’s reputation as a movie star and brought both country music and, er, bar-based mechanical bulls more mainstream recognition. Now 20th Century Fox TV and Paramount TV are hoping that a series based on 1980 drama Urban Cowboy will stay on the ratings bull for a while.
Hustle & Flow’s Craig Brewer is attached to write and direct the pilot, and oversee the potential series as executive producer. It’ll chronicle the star-crossed relationship of Bud Davis and Sissy (played in the film version by Debra Winger), who meet in a Texas bar, fall in love and marry quickly. Yet their relationship is filled with the push-and-pull of their differing outlooks on life, which causes them endless emotional friction.
Though the movie was praised for the depiction of the romance and the world around it, the series should offer possibilities to explore it even more deeply, and Fox will be hoping it could eventually serve as a companion piece to its successful show, Empire. But it’s still early days for the new project, which is just in the basic script stage as of yet.