While TV has, for a while now, been the place to which lots of film types gravitate for a chance at producing more satisfying work, it appears that remakes, reboots and sequels to actual movies are headed that way too. Dan Aykroyd was yesterday reportedly shopping a new take on The Blues Brothers to networks while US channel NBC already has a show based on The Firm set to hit the airwaves next year. Now it’s also considering adding a goggle box version of Romancing the Stone to its schedules, with Real Steel's Shawn Levy attached to executive produce and possibly direct the pilot.
Robert Zemeckis’ 1984 film found Kathleen Turner as romance fiction writer Joan Wilder, who ventures off to Colombia to ransom her kidnapped sister with a treasure map. But she gets more of an adventure than she bargained for when she is mixed up with dashing soldier of fortune Jack Colton (Michael Douglas). The movie was a success, and quickly spawned a less successful sequel the following year with The Jewel of the Nile.
Hollywood has looked to repeat the original’s sparky formula for years. There was talk of an actual remake back in late 2008 when Eagle Eye co-writer Daniel McDermott was tasked with pumping out a retooled script. And then a year later, The Ugly Truth director Robert Luketic was approached to take on the job of calling the shots, which led to the idea of Katherine Heigl taking over the Turner role.
Now though, it looks like the TV version will wipe clean the slate and pitch the concept of a “successful but unfulfilled woman who teams with a risk-taking adventurer on weekly missions” combined with an overarching plot about her search for her missing brother.
Mark Friedman, who oversaw unsuccessful Christian Slater TV drama The Forgotten, will write the pilot script and Levy – who is on board via his 21 Laps/Adelstein company at 20th Century Fox Television – is up for directing that first show, assuming it doesn’t clash with any of his possible future film jobs. First, though, NBC has to actually greenlight it…