You can’t keep old TV series from being warmed over like last week’s roast quite like Hollywood can, and once again, they are trying to make "MacGyver" happen. Twice over.
READ MORE: ‘Haywire,’ ‘Lethal Weapon,’ ‘The A-Team,’ And MacGyver TV Shows In Development
Earlier this week, Deadline reported that CBS ordered a pilot for a new "MacGyver" TV show, one that would focus on the exploits of young, 20-something Angus MacGyver, whose knack for using paper clips, seaweed, and pocket lint to get out of life threatening situations, lands him a sweet gig with a clandestine organization. No word yet on who will fill that title role, but the thing is, that’s not all.
Variety reveals that Lionsgate is now mounting a "MacGyver" movie reboot. Series creator Lee David Zlotoff and "The Fast & The Furious" mastermind Neal Moritz are working on the project, though that’s about all the details for now. But it’s not the first time "MacGyver" attempted a leap to the big screen.
Back in 2012, the buzz on James Wan‘s nifty "The Conjuring" was so good, that New Line decided to toss the writer/director "MacGyver" as a possible movie project. It never came to pass, but last year, the director shared his vision for the project.
“…my initial concept was I wanted to do a young college MacGyver who went to Boston, one of the great universities, who’s really brilliant, right? He’s a really smart guy but he’s so smart he could never feel like he fit into a construct, or into a world that is an establishment. So he’s always a bit of an outsider… To cut a long story short, the idea here is I wanted to put my MacGyver story around something like a ‘North by Northwest,’” he said. “…in the context of the story he gets blamed for something that he had designed, something really big that’s something everyone wanted, and now someone has weaponized it and everyone’s coming after him. He’s running for his life and he’s trying to clear his name, not quite unlike the structure of ‘Enemy of the State.’ So imagine ‘Enemy of the State,’ if Will Smith had the brains of MacGyver.”
That could’ve been interesting, but we’ll see where these dueling "MacGyver" projects end up. Maybe CBS and Lionsgate can work together and create a MacGyver Cinematic Universe?