You don’t need Kickstarter to give a pulse to your dead TV series and transition it to the big screen if you have access to the adorably evasive Bill Murray and his Bat-phone. Screenwriter and Magic City creator Mitch Glazer is teaching us all that lesson today.
The Mitch Glazer-created period Miami casino mob series Magic City, which Starz canceled last year after a two-season run, is moving to the big screen. Glazer wrote the script and will direct series regulars Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Danny Huston, Olga Kurylenko and Kelly Lynch, who’ll be joined by Bruce Willis, Bill Murray and others.
Murray has worked extensively with Glazer, who co-wrote Scrooged and Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video, and both wrote and directed Passion Play. Murray is also starring in Rock the Casbah, which Glazer wrote. This isn’t just a Hollywood friendship, though. These two men share a bond so deep that Murray can call Glazer up to tell him whenever Roadhouse is on TV and Glazer’s wife, Kelly Lynch, is getting plowed by Patrick Swayze.
As for Magic City, here’s what you can expect to see when it eventually makes it to the screen.
The pitch: Miami 1962. Gangsters, hoteliers, spies and socialites win, lose and die beneath the palms. JFK and a mob boss share a mistress in a Collins Avenue penthouse. The CIA secretly arms Cuban freedom fighters and hires the mafia to kill Castro. The most powerful Miami Beach hotel owner battles them all to save his family and survive in the Magic City.
Sounds pretty good. Magic City had one of those blink and you’ll miss it runs on Starz and never really caught fire in the ratings. That it lasted two seasons is a bit of a mis-direct since Starz actually handed out the renewal prior to the show’s premiere. Apparently, this isn’t the first time that a wrap-up movie has been suggested, but the effort to build something like that for Starz “fell through” previously.
In the grand scheme of things, it seems like everything is coming up aces for Glazer and company, though. With Murray and Bruce Willis aboard, this film will likely get a lot more attention than a series finale would have gotten on Starz. It might even find an acceptance that it never quite got in its first run.
Source: Deadline
