Starsky & Hutch to return to television courtesy of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn.
It appears that the remake/reboot model that a lot of Hollywood studios have employed over the last decade is definitely having a knock on affect in the realm of television. Recently we reported that Vin Diesel is set to produce a remake of the ’80s detective show Miami Vice and we also reported that David Hasselhoff has spoken of his desire to get Knight Rider back on the road with a Logan-esque vibe.
This news is on top of confirmed TV comebacks on the US networks for The Munsters, a new female lead version of Dynasty and a live action show based on the 1960s animated series The Jetsons.
Rumours circulated last week of yet another reboot in the form of the classic 1970s cop show Starsky & Hutch. This has now been confirmed with Variety reporting that TV streaming service Amazon have commissioned the show in partnership with Sony Pictures TV. The company responsible for its production will be Guardians of The Galaxy director James Gunn’s Troll Court Entertainment making the show their first foray into television. The show will be based upon Gunn’s idea by his brother Brian and cousin Mark Gunn. James will act as executive producer and had this to say about the new show;
“When I was a kid, Starsky & Hutch was the first ‘adult’ show I ever saw, and I fell in love. It instilled in me a lifelong love of gritty street shows, of killer 70’s threads, and muscle cars. So when Neal Mortiz (Sony) asked me if I wanted to be a part of an all new ‘Starsky & Hutch’ on TV, I was instantly intrigued. I teamed up with the two writers I trusted most in the world to work with us, my brother Brian Gunn and my cousin Mark Gunn and together we came up with a show that I’m really proud of. At Amazon I believed we would have the most freedom to create something that is different, challenges the audience, and that strays outside the parameters of genre from time to time.”
Joe Lewis, head of comedy, drama, and VR for Amazon Studios had this to say about their most recent acquisition;
“Chekhov said if you have a gun in the room, it’s going to go off. We can’t wait to see what three Gunns do with ‘Starsky & Hutch.”
The original Starsky and Hutch starred Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul and ran for almost a hundred episodes between 1974 and 1979 on US network ABC. The show focused on the lives and work of Bay City cops David Starsky and Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson. The show was a massive success making global stars of Soul and Glaser in the ’70s. The show also featured Antonio Fargas as their supercool street-informant Huggy Bear and possibly one of the greatest ever screen cars in Starsky’s red Gran Torino with its distinctive white stripe.
There was a brief renaissance for the show in 2004 when Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson starred in a motion picture adaptation of the show which proved to be a modest success. There is no word yet on whether this new show will go along the same lines or return to its more classic cop drama origins.