A Complete List Of Upcoming TV Adaptations

It looks like TV is all the rage these days, many believe the best entertainment is back on TV as opposed to the big screen.  So it shouldn’t surprise us to hear of a few TV adaptations, but maybe it should surprise us to know that a few tonnes are incoming.  There are quite a few out there, but let’s stay focused to manly movie TV adaptations.

The Expendables

The first on this list is The Expendables.  Alongside a potential fourth movie and probably canned female spin off movie, it is said that they are creating a TV series.  the series is being developed by Fox and LionsGate TV.  Secondly, Shane Brennan (NCIS) will write alongside Greg Coolidge (Ride Along) and Kirk Ward. The TV adaptation will be “a fun action drama that unites iconic TV stars as a new team of highly skilled heroes who are on a mission to stop a dangerous terrorist.”  So it seems that the old team are not returning, hence ‘new team’ and that the comedic tone could possibly be retained, hence the word ‘fun’.

 

Thee Days Of The Condor

Remember that superb spy thriller from the 1970s, Three Days of the Condor?  Well its being brought back to life, for a television reboot.

Sydney Pollack’s classic 1975 thriller is being taking up by Skydance Productions who are teaming with MGM and Paramount TV for the smallscreen offering.  Sounds like quite a bit of money right there, hopefully it’ll look the business at least.

 

Minority Report

Minority Report, the 2002 movie which was originally intended as a sequel to Total Recall, is itself getting a sequel.  Not at the movies though, rather the concept will come through TV land.

‘Minority Report’ – keeping the name –  is set ten years after the film in which one of the former Precogs teams with a shrewd police detective and attempt to stop the murders that he predicts.  Ironically Colin Farrell appeared in the original movie, which as mentioned replaced Total Recall 2, only to then go and appear in the Total Recall reboot, which was terrible by the way.

 

Limitless

There’s a TV show coming for Limitless.  It will feature Jake McDorman as Brian Finch, who discovers that a mysterious drug called NZT can give him access to 100% of his brain function. This causes him to remember everything he has ever experienced, read, watched or heard.

When news of his genius reaches the FBI, they decide that his newfound brain power could be used to solve their most complex cases. The series also stars “Dexter” star Jennifer Carpenter and “Covert Affairs” alum Hill Harper as the FBI agents working with Finch.

 

The Boondock Saints

Even though he has not managed to get a third movie off the ground in recent years, filmmaker Troy Duffy is taking another path with plans to write and direct a ‘Boondock’ TV prequel series for IM Global Television.

Duffy has written the pilot episode and will also direct it, and has already compiled a series bible which chronicles the MacManus boys’ origins as Irish immigrants in South Boston.

Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery, who played the MacManus twins in the films, will not star but may serve as co-executive producers

 

To Live And Die In L.A.

One of the most underrated movies of the 1980s, William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., is going to get the TV treatment.  The Exorcist director is going to develop the series for Manhattan and Salem broadcaster WGN America.

Friedkin is tipped to direct the pilot and executive produce the series based upon ideas he hatched with Crash co-writer Robert Moresco. Moresco will script the series and also act as an executive producer.

 

The Terminator

Skydance, the company behind Terminator: Genisys, is not finished with the property yet.  They have claimed a sequel will release in 2017 (good luck with that) but, apparently, they’re also touting a cable TV series.  One that will probably be connected with the latest movie. At a press day for Genisys, Skydance’s David Ellison and Dana Goldberg offered an update on the series, suggesting it might be a 13-episode offering on cable.

“It’s something that we’re developing as we speak”, Ellison said. “To speak kind of larger to that, one of the things we would love to do at Skydance—it’s a very lofty goal—is to build worlds across multiple mediums. And to me, I think everyone talks in Hollywood about franchises, ‘it’s a franchise business, it’s a franchise business’. I think that’s a slightly old-fashioned word, and I think it’s a world creation business’.

 

Training Day

Training Day is also in line it appears.

Per Deadline, it was Antoine Fuqua (a director of supremely manly movies) brought the idea to WBTV, and he has enlisted Jerry Bruckheimerand his Jerry Bruckheimer TV banner to executive produce. Will Beall, who penned Gangster Squad and an early draft of Justice League, will write the script while Fuqua will executive produce and likely direct the pilot. Who knows if it’ll actually work, but the original was a damn good movie and one of Fuqua’s best.  You wanna go home or you wanna make money?

 

Behind Enemy Lines

Fox has also apparently ordered a pilot for “Behind Enemy Lines,” a TV drama series adaptation of the 2001 movie.

John Moore directed the original military thriller about an American pilot (Owen Wilson) shot down over Bosnia while on a secret mission, at the same time his commanding officer (Gene Hackman) fights to launch a search and rescue mission. Jeffrey Nachmanoff (“Hostages,” “Homeland”) is set to write and direct the the potential pilot which will shift the action to the jungles of Latin America and involve an entire flight crew who have been shot down.

 

Taken

What happens when you have a hit movie that no-one expected to blow the world away, even if they anticipated a mild success?  Of course, you make two inferior sequels, one worse than the other.  Then?  The obvious answer, put the franchise out to pasture.

Taken is headed to television.

Luc Besson will produce the series, a prequel of sorts to the films, exploring the early life of the Liam Neeson character, ex-covert operative Bryan Mills. Despite the Taken TV series following a younger Mills, though, it will be set in present day, serving as a prequel to the film franchise in the same way that Bates Motel serves as a prequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

 

Jack Ryan

There is yet another movie franchise headed to television and apparently the latest is the struggling Jack Ryan property.  It seems that the movie have not been able to get much traction since Harrison Ford signed off, although I thinkThe Sum of All Fears is a great movie.

Anyway, Collider reports that Carlton Cuse(Lost) and writer Graham Roland (The Returned), Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes and Paramount TV have set off a bidding war with their new take on the character. According to Deadline, this show won’t be a direct adaptation of any of the books, ‘but a new contemporary take on the character in his prime as a CIA analyst/operative using the novels as source material.’

 

Layer Cake

Is anyone surprised to hear that Jason Statham is set to star in the action comedy TV series“Viva La Madness” for Gaumont International Television?  A “Layer Cake” TV series, sort of.

This will be sourced from the book of the same name by J.J. Connolly, the story follows the same anonymous protagonist played by Daniel Craig in 2004’s film adaptation of Connolly’s“Layer Cake” novel.

The story centers on the man who is now stranded in the Caribbean itching for the criminal life he left behind. He soon joins forces with two robust London gangsters. Connolly, Statham andSteven Chasman will executive produce with Connolly set to pen the series. A network is not yet attached.

 

In The Line Of Fire

Finally, perhaps Clint Eastwood’s 1990’s thrillerIn The Line Of Fire could be the best one.

The movie is getting the small screen treatment by Sony Pictures TV production and will tell of a secret service agent and his female partner who get caught up in a game of cat-and-mouse with a rogue CIA hitman who threatens to take down the POTUS.  Superb movie by the way, very very good.  So it goes without saying that if you haven’t caught it yet, do so immediately.