Movie Make-out

MacGuyver duct tapes himself to feature film project

Posted by Trisha Lynn on March 17th, 2009 at 6:01 am CST | Category: News

macguyverI’m not normally a fan of movie-to-film er, TV-to-film adaptations, and yet, the latest one to be announced from New Line has me grinning in anticipation.

The Hollywood Reporter noted that Raffaella De Laurentiis, daughter of Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis and who seems to share her father’s eye for films, will be producing a feature film version of the 1980s hit TV show “MacGuyver” for her Raffaella Productions house, along with her stepmother Martha De Laurentiis and “MacGuyver” series creator Lee Zlotoff and her father as executive producer. No other firm details have been set.

What I loved about “MacGuyver” is what almost everybody seems to love about it: a really smart guy uses his smarts to get himself out of trouble and doesn’t have to kill anyone to do it. It didn’t hurt that series star Richard Dean Anderson was so cute and seemed to have a different girlfriend or kid sidekick every episode (remember, I was 8 when this series first started).

And this may sound too damn fuzzy liberal-minded of me, but I think I like the idea of today’s audiences being introduced or re-introduced to a hero who doesn’t have to torture people to get the job done or brutally kill maim everyone who comes after him—and I’m looking directly at you two, Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne.

The only reservation I have is: who would they get to play the “new” MacGuyver? I know absolutely nothing about actors who play under the age of 25 these days, and I think that in order to play to a mainstream audience, the character would have to be recast as younger with Anderson playing a cameo or minor supporting role—a gambit that worked very well in 1994’s Maverick.

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  • @TheDJGuy: I was trying to figure out how to use that observation in the article, but couldn't come up with something that everyone else hasn't written yet. As it is, I think I totally copped out on the headline.
  • DeadMeat
    TheDJGuy I don't want to sound like a nitpicker but it's a verb not a vowel. A E I O U and sometimes Y are vowels.
  • milesperminute's post introduces a valid observation... "MacGuyver" is now a vowel. It's a vowel used in daily conversation, even in the very first episode of Stargate SG-1. How often will Raffaella Productions be tempted to insert some variation on the phrase... "C'mon Mac! Just MacGuyer a solution!"
  • MO
    I don't think casting will be a problem.
    All it will need is a paper-clip, the battery of a mobile phone, maybe a chewing gum and an old shoe so MacGuyver can build himself a time machine to bring his younger self from the TV series onto the movie set. Easy!
  • @djpowwow: *facefault* Will fix that, thanks.
  • djpowwow
    This is, without a doubt, the most awesome news I've heard in a while. I just hope whomever they snag to play the "new" Angus MacGuyver (that's right, even I remember that his first name was Angus), that they'll at least have the courtesy to keep the mullet.

    On a side note, don't mean to nit-pick your writing, but did you mean to say "television-to-film adaptation" instead of "movie-to-film adaptations"?
  • milesperminute
    I'm going to show up to the theater with a piece of paper with a rubber band around it, with "ADMIT ONE" written in marker... see if I can MacGuyver my way in.
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