Here's one we're fairly certain no one saw coming. Well, maybe producer Joel Silver, whose company is behind the idea. But Shane Black's The Nice Guys, which debuted last year to great reviews but moderate box office, is headed to TV with a twist – it'll feature female leads.
The original saw two very different private eyes, Ryan Gosling's goofy Holland March and Russell Crowe's tightly-wound Jackson Healey investigating the case of a missing young woman wrapped up in a conspiracy around the death of a porn star and mobsters.
30 Minutes Or Less writer Michael Diliberti is aboard to work on the first script, as ordered by the US Fox network. In addition to the gender swap, he's switching the story from the original's 1977 setting to contemporary times, and while we can see that as an advantage from a budget point of view, it might end up sacrificing some of the charm and appeal of the story.
In related Fox TV news, arriving via Variety, the channel is also backing a couple of other projects, one hailing from Diablo Cody. She's overseeing a pilot called Two Nights, which finds Sunday Night, a former cop living on a shrinking island with a pet squirrel , who is dragged back into the law enforcement world when her foster father asks for her help. She finds herself working on cases for the FBI. Emily Silver, a veteran of shows such as The Flash, is writing the actual pilot.
Then there's a new take on the Kung Fu TV concept, which at one point saw David Carradine as a Shaolin monk who wanders the American west and solves problems with his zen attitude and the odd lashing of martial arts. While Baz Luhrmann was the name last associated with the film adaptation, this show will instead have Wendy Mericle working on the script.
This take on the idea will follow Lucy Chang, a Buddhist monk and kung fu master travelling 1950s America on a similar mission to Carradine's. She's also searching for the man who stole her child and teams up with charming Korean War veteran JT Cullen, a man with his own secrets.