The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision Blog is reporting that Warner Bros. has distributed a number of potential remakes and reboots shepherded for many years by departing studio exec. Jessica Goodman among other execs including a number of remakes that have been in development hell and even presumed dead. At the top of that list is a possible reboot of the buddy action franchise “Lethal Weapon” that put Mel Gibson and Danny Glover on the map with four successful installments in the ’80s, all directed by Richard Donner and written by Shane Black. One would expect that a reboot would introduce a new pair of actors and director into the formula used for those films, and there’s no word whether producer Joel Silver would still be involved.
The article also mentions that Warner Bros. may be ready to bring Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan back to the screen with a new actor in the role of the man raised by the apes. Most recently, there has been a popular Disney animated movie in 1999 as well as a spin-off animated television series, but it’s been thirteen years since a live action feature film, that being Tarzan and the Lost City.
One remake that has been discussed a few times in recent years was The Dirty Dozen, which Guy Ritchie had been talking about doing with producer Joel Silver, but they ended up doing Sherlock Holmes together and Silver thought that the comic movie The Losers covered much of the same territory.
An even older remake idea that had been batted around for years was one based on the 1977 comedy Oh, God!, starring the late George Burns and John Denver, a premise that seems rife for reworking by a modern filmmaker. There had been talk of doing a remake of the 1973 Yul Brynner sci-fi thriller Westworld in the last couple of decades, but nothing has become of it, though it does look like the studio might give it another try.
With the success of the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, Warner Bros. is also eyeing Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 Western The Wild Bunch as a possible film in their catalogue to have reworked by a filmmaker for modern audiences.
Although there’s no word any of these might get fast-tracked without the right talent being attached, Heat Vision includes a lot of conjecture about possible scenarios for all of the above movies, which you can read here.
