New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Brett Beach: I second Bruce's comments. There can't ever be an end to the nostalgia of the '80s (or any time period really) as far as Hollywood is concerned, because it's better to spend big and win big with a "proven" idea, even if it seems to make no sense to turn "Brand X" into a film, than to spend a medium amount on an original or hard to sell concept and work overtime to fill the public in. Any video game, kids' book, TV show, pop song, existing movie, commercial jingle and/or industrial strength cleaning agent from the 1980s is up for grabs. Just grabbing at straws, I say why not QBert, GoBots, My Two Dads, and The Safety Dance? (I am kidding, but only a very little.)

Side note- Read David Sirota's brilliantly scathing book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now which is like Chuck Klosterman, only politically charged and frequently scorching. His chapter on Red Dawn (will we ever see this from MGM?) alone makes the book

Matthew Huntley: Definitely enhance, but if future projects can be done well, I say the studios should go for it. The only problem is, we've yet to see any that have really been done all that well. Can anyone name one? Here's a few more '80s shows I could see Hollywood buy and adapting into a feature (by the way, I'm still laughing over Brett's "industrial strength cleaning agent" comment): Airwolf, Riptide, Whiz Kids, Hard Time on Planet Earth and Wizards and Warriors. God save us all.

Jim Van Nest: I think the time has come. Special effects and movie technology are finally ready. M. Night Shyamalan has nothing else going on. Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages...are you ready for: Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels?!?!?!?!

David Mumpower: Out of the titles listed thus far, He-Man is definitely the project foremost in my mind as Friday's box office numbers started rolling in. That's the animated project with the greatest name recognition saturation with consumers. A lot of people have a soft place in their hearts for Dungeons & Dragons, which is rather indefensible in hindsight, but those movies already technically exist. There would be rights acquisitions required to get it off the ground, even if it seemed likely to be a hit, a point I doubt.

The Dallas movie is off now that TNT has done something I've been literally waiting for a decade for someone to do. They're just going to pick up 20 years down the line with some of the old regulars like Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy. That's a premise that works brilliantly for television, but would only succeed in a Star Trek (or Firefly?) scenario for features.

The one title that has not been mentioned that I think merits consideration is Remington Steele; the debonair thief premise consistently sells and Pierce Brosnan's presence would add some gravitas to a reboot if they could get him signed on. Similarly, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, knockoff of Remington Steele, is a money premise that would play just as well in the 2010s as it did in the 1980s. And of course there are the iconic programs from the era: Moonlighting and Cheers. I'm not sure how well Cheers would work as a movie (and I have intentionally excluded The Cosby Show due to the advanced age of the man himself), but Moonlighting is now and always will be a killer concept. Creator Glenn Gordon Caron isn't even 60 yet, so he's certainly not too old and with Medium off the air, I think he could be wooed. That may be a pipe dream, but that's the one update for which I will only maintain hope.

Continued:       1       2       3