MacGyver‘s never been far from pop cultural consciousness, and the creator even tried to sue the producers of MacGruber a few years back. That apparently didn’t work out for him, but incredibly, New Line is still moving forward with an actual MacGyver movie. The earnest version usually comes out after the parody, right? That’s how that works?
New Line is cobbling together its “MacGyver” movie, entering talks with James Wan [Saw, Insidious] after the director’s supernatural horror pic “The Conjuring” pleased studio brass.
Obviously, “the studio loved it!” before a real audience has even seen it is always an ironclad guarantor of success.
The 1980s TV series starring Richard Dean Anderson followed Angus MacGyver, an agent of the fictional Phoenix Foundation. MacGyver never carried a gun, using his wits and whatever was lying around to fight criminals.
– “Hey, so we’ve got this movie about a hero who’s super smart and nice and refuses to use a gun. Who should we get to direct it?”
– “I’ve got just the guy! He directed this awesome tortune porn movie about a serial killer who chokes chicks to death their with her own pussy lips!” (I’ve never seen Saw, I assume that’s what it’s about).
No plot details have emerged for the script that Jason Richman drafted and was most recently worked over by Brian and Mark Gunn. Whether Anderson would be involved is not known.
The show was a hit for ABC, running for seven years, spawning two telepics and a 2003 spinoff, “Young MacGyver,” that never got picked up. [Variety]
“Young MacGyver.” Oh yeah, that’s online (embedded below). I know what I’ll be doing on my lunch hour today.
The levels of success for a television series used to be 1. Pilot. 2. Pick up. 3. Syndication. Now it goes 1. Pilot. 2. Pick up. 3. Syndication. 4. Semi-ironic movie adaptation. In fact, Stephen J. Cannell has a second yacht financed solely with irony money.