Amazon sets its sights on reviving MGM classics Robocop, Legally Blonde, and more
Amazon is reportedly eyeing (re)development plans for film and TV adaptations of Robocop, Legally Blonde, Stargate, Fame, Pink Panther, and more
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If it ain’t broke (and honestly, even if it is) reboot it: that’s the Amazon way. Per Deadline, Amazon Studios has been piling up its plate with existing MGM IP since acquiring the studio for $8.5 billion in March 2022. So far, the streamer has set its sights on roughly a dozen titles of interest for film and/or television development, including Robocop, Legally Blonde, Fame, Stargate, Barbershop, The Magnificent Seven, Pink Panther, and The Thomas Crown Affair.
Although so far, no projects appear to have moved beyond the inquiry stage, plans for each title differ; some are being shepherded towards TV adaptations (Fame, Barbershop, and The Magnificent Seven), other towards film (The Thomas Crown Affair, The Pink Panther), and Poltergeist towards a reboot nebulous enough to only be described as a “project” that’s a “possibility down the road.”
A few big-ticket items are slated to get the universe treatment and span both film and television. Amazon is reportedly in early conversations about a Legally Blonde movie (separate, it seems, from Mindy Kaling’s long-in-progress Legally Blonde 3) and television series. Stargate and Robocop are also being prepped for both treatments, with a Stargate movie and Robocop TV show kicking off each franchise reboot, respectively. Amazon had already announced plans to expand Creed across film and TV alongside franchise staple Michael B. Jordan; the studio also has a first-look film and TV deal with Sylvester Stallone that could include expanding the overarching Rocky franchise.
None of this, obviously, is new territory, but just how well-tread the IP Amazon’s interested in serves as an instructive temperature check for the industry right now. Robocop, Poltergeist, and Barbershop have all seen multiple sequels, while The Pink Panther and The Thomas Crown Affair have each been rebooted before. Stargate stretched an initial 1994 Roland Emmerich film into an entire universe, including Stargate SG-1, one of the longest-running science fiction shows to ever air on American television. Fame and Legally Blonde have both been turned into stage musicals; The Magnificent Seven (which itself is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai) has spawned three sequels, a remake, and a TV series.
With so much lined up, Amazon is clearly banking on the belief that audiences aren’t too stuffed to enjoy some second (or third, or fourth, or fifth) helpings of these Hollywood classics. Here’s hoping Amazon’s eyes aren’t too big for its stomach.
50 Comments
Weird how people don’t talk more about the Stargate franchise these days.
Why talk about the Stargate franchise when you can talk too the Stargate franchise?I’m saying I kidnapped Richard Dean Anderson and have him chained up in my sub basement where I make him answer all my questions about the series.
Ask him about The Furlings, I NEED TO KNOW MORE!
I’ll use him as bait to kidnap one of them, too.
Take it easy there, Patty and/or Selma.
It’s always been my theory that the fandom of Star Trek TNG and Stargate SG-1 are hugely overlapping if not exactly the same fandom.And between Picard and those four other Trek shows Paramount is presently pushing, there just isn’t a whole lot of oxygen for the Gate franchise to breathe right now.
Yeah, but SG-1’s first eight seasons(and Atlantis’s first season) aired when there was a Trek show on the air and that didn’t seem to hurt it much.
My guess is the different tone of Universe put a lot of fans off; then the cliff-hanger ending alienated those who stuck with it.I think it’s also one of those older shows that got built on and surpassed by “peak TV” era stuff. After stuff like Game of Thrones, The Expanse etc. it’s hard to go back to the calibre of Walking Dead or Supernatural, and Stargate probably falls into that category too for non-fans.
I love the Expanse books but think the show is just good, not as good as Stargate.
Remember when the rise of streaming services was going to result in more independent, diverse, creative, and experimental movies and TV shows, breaking away from the stale Big Studio and Network TV monolith models? Good times.
All I ever wanted from streaming was to be able to watch shows without commercials. I loathe commercials. Now I can watch Star Wars and Marvel TV shows with no commercials, I LOVE THE FUTURE!
Enjoy it while you can. In five years, every one of those streaming services are going to be ad-supported. A couple of them might keep an ad-free model as an extreme premium, but it won’t be cheap. The numbers just don’t add up. Every streaming service is losing money right now.
I will pay $50/month for a streaming service with decent content and no ads. Considering how much cable costs it’s still a bargain.
Not me. When they said “streaming” all I thought was they would just transfer all 1,000 shitty channels from cable to online. When reality TV came out, I knew then original content was dead.
Even reality tv must be dead, or at least severely wounded, if “Beer & Breast” can only garner 2.6 out of 5 stars.
Too much beer, not enough breast.
The logical sequel to ‘The Man Show’.
Remember when the internet was going to help scientists and world leaders communicate, share ideas and information and make the world a better place?
They predicted the same thing of cable TV fifty years ago.
it’s almost like how the internet would unite the world through access to knowledge and diverse perspectives.
Amazon bet heavily on prestige TV like Transparent during the Roy Price era. And they haven’t come up with much in the way of hits since he left.https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/inside-amazon-studios-jen-salke-vision-shows-1235364913/
I wasn’t yet into the streaming service game. Was it just a promise or were there actually some decent shows?
I mean, they kinda did. We had years of pretty amazing stuff.Sad that era seems to be coming to a close as The Great Consolidation approaches.
It’s way too late to reboot RoboCop, you can just turn on the news for that kind of story now.
One of RoboCop’s prime directives is “protect the innocent”. By today’s standards, that would be considered a ridiculous fantasy.
The secret directive thing pretty much tracks though.
They already tried a Robocop TV serieshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboCop_(live_action_TV_series)
Did they have to change the line to “Women of ill repute LEAVE!!!”
Clarence is more polite in the TV edit version. Skip to 4:03 for both versions of the scene.
I cannot wait to get home and watch this.
Enjoy!
Am I alone in not knowing until know that “scumbag” is/was an obscenity? I feel like someone should have told me.
I watched the shit out of that show circa 1995.
I can’t wait to see them miss the entire point of RoboCop again!
‘Those who do not learn history are doomed to reboot it. ‘
I’m reading this more as Robocop vs Legally Blonde, a wacky courtroom action drama.
Robocop vs. Legally Blonde as a satire of Law and Order
I’m not entirely sure that’s even satire.
Legally Blonde sues Robocop for police brutality.
I’d stream that for a dollar
If they’they’re going to restart Robocop, get the creative team from The Boys on it.
I guess it’s sort of cute that the algorithm Amazon is using to develop IP is as shitty as the one that tries to recommend books to me…
I’d watch a series basesd on the Barbershop movies but they’d have to hand-pick a stellar cast. Cedric was the heart of the franchise imo. If they could lure him back he could actually play the age of the character he was playing at the time. Do it!All the others? Jfc, create something new. There must be thousands of series concepts that are denied because they don’t have brand recognition or nostalgia appeal. People can’t be watching versions of Legally Blonde for the next 50 years, can they?
Coincidently, I just watched Robocop again a few nights ago and it’s pretty much a perfect movie as is. The zany, over the top tone, and equally over the top violence, mesh to make something that really can’t be recreated. The sequels didn’t, the already tried reboot missed the point entirely. On a side note, Bottin’s Robocop suit still looks amazing over 35 years on now. Another side note, what in the fuck is with this giant ad that repeats below the navigation bar and takes up the entire screen of my laptop!?!
I saw it on the big screen again last year, the part with that, I think it was a Mayor, refusing to leave office, demanding a recount, and to be reinstated no matter how the count turned out, I must have thought that seemed so unbelievable in 1987.
We’ve all been waiting for the Thomas Crown extended universe.
How about they combine some of these properties? The police force is looking for recruits to sign up to its new RoboCop program, but gets a surprising application: spunky, fashion-forward Elle Woods. Could this blonde bombshell be just the thing to bring law and order to Detroit?Coming this year: ‘Legally Cop’.
Or maybe RoboBlonde.
For the love of all that’s holy, leave Poltergeist alone. The first film is nigh-on perfect, and afterwards you get diminishing returns all the way down to that godforsaken remake. I love the shit out of the first movie, but it hasn’t been a franchise drawing eyes in over twenty years.
The only thing I could possibly interested in is a Pink Panther animated feature, as the animal character (as well as the rest of the Mirsch/Depatie-Freling universe) have never been a protagonist of an entire film.