You'd have thought with with the Will Forte / SNL parody MacGruber about to hit cinemas, any potential MacGyver project would already be dead in the water. Not so, according to the Hollywood Reporter, who bring us the news that screenwriter Jason Richman is coming to** MacGyver**'s rescue{
MacGyver was the ABC series that ran for seven years in the 80s and early 90s, starring Richard Dean Anderson as the secret agent able to make life-saving inventions out of household materials. If you took him captive, you'd better hope there were no paper clips or rubber bands or bottle tops lying around: he'd have jury-rigged a tank in no time.
MacGyver was first put into development at New Line last Spring, but he's been slower to get off the blocks than his bemulleted SNL twin. Producer Rafaella De Laurentiis is clearly unfazed however. We'd imagine the buzz around The A-Team might have something to do with that, and that MacGyver might be looking at a similar tone: basically seriously intended, but still with plenty of humour.
THR point out that Richman was an uncredited script doctor on Black Hawk Down, and also on Rush Hour 3. That's quite an eclectic CV, but whatever line he decides to walk, he'll have to tread very carefully to win over a MacGruber-savvy audience primed to laugh at everything anyway. An official start-date is still some way off.