Back to the '80s: TV, Films Set For Remakes

A-Team, TJ Hooker, Asteroids, Ghostbusters, Footloose

Jul 20, 2009

Hollywood looks set to enter another phase of 1980s flashbackery over the coming years with remakes planned for a host of TV classics, film favorites & video game relics.

With the '80s fashion fad long gone and '80s inflected music already sounding a little passe (again), Hollywood looks set to lead a new 1980s revival with yet another rash of TV show adaptations, video game re-interpretations and feature film remakes. And who can blame them? With the latest Transformers film blazing up the box office recently, it seems like Gen-X nostalgia is fast becoming a bankable asset for the big studios.

A whole new lineup for The A-Team will get stuck in a midwestern barn on a big screen near you very soon, with The Hangover's Bradley Cooper set to play 'Faceman' Peck, and Liam Neeson in the frame for Colonel Hannibal Smith. If you believe the rumours, B.A. Baracas (the role that Mr. T made his own) will defintely be played by a rapper of some sort: heads its The Game, tails its Common. One thing's for sure: they won't be gettin' on that plane!

Meanwhile, the whiter than white William Shatner/Heather Locklear TV classic T.J. Hooker is also set for a remake, with a screenplay penned by Brent Maddock and SS Wilson, who are also behind an upcoming reimagining of everyone's favourite robot-with-a-heart action-comedy, Short Circuit. Initial indications suggest the T.J. Hooker remake may take the form of a Starsky and Hutch-style retro comedy farce. Who would've thought?

A film based on the story behind the phenomenal rise of Facebook seems a rather predictable, uninspired move by Hollywood, but just when you thought they were getting lazy, Universal recently announced that, after their success in a recent four-studio bidding war, they are currently planning for the film adapation of everyone's third favourite arcade game, Asteroids. Those familiar with the game are probably already laughing, but for those who are not, Asteroids was a very basic, two-dimensional game in which you controlled a 'spaceship' (ie. a triangle) and shot at 'asteroids' (ie. floating line-drawn blobs). This one could be interesting, but here's hoping for some Tron-style retro magnificence.

It's exactly twenty-five years since we first asked 'Who ya gonna call?', and the buzz surrounding the forthcoming Ghostbusters video game (featuring the vocal talents of most of the original stars) has fueled speculation that audiences could be treated to another slime-tastic outing from Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd and the rest of the gang, with a tentative third film already being scripted via Sony Pictures.

Meanwhile, Paramount are planning a remake of the 1984 Kevin-Bacon-in-legwarmers classic Footloose, with current casting promising Gossip Girl guy Chace Crawford and Dancing With the Stars regular Julianne Hough in the lead roles.

And these are only the beginning: as long as there are remake rights to purchase and cinemas to fill, you can be sure that Hollywood will continue pumping out the same familiar much for years to come: Expect a big screen re-jig of Seinfeld in 2025 and a re-invigoration of the Saw franchise around about 2030. Maybe.

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