I think I’ve seen maybe two episodes of Ice Road Truckers, and what I saw was pretty good. It has a pretty gripping concept, and it’s one that could lend itself very well to a fictional drama. For the uninitiated, Ice Road Truckers is about [crazy] people who drive 18-wheelers over frozen lakes in northern Canada in order to carry equipment to remote diamond miners.
Apparently, Fox also realized the potential in that concept, because they’ve picked up the rights to the show’s “premise” (I’m not sure exactly what that entails). “What will they do with this premise?” you might ask. They’re going to make it into a summer/winter tentpole action flick.
Like I said above, I think this concept could make for a pretty kick-ass movie, depending on which direction they take it. I’d suggest they go for balls-to-the-wall crazy action movie territory in an attempt to simply be awesome. I say this because while there are an infinite number of scenarios they could choose they will probably pick a terrible one, because it’s a tentpole. If there’s great action, though, that won’t matter much.
Here’s what I’m picturing for Ice Road Truckers! The Movie: a grizzled old ice trucker plans on retiring in a week, and in that week he must train the new kid. During that week, they discover a group of scoundrels are planning on doing something dastardly to the diamond miners, and it’s a race against time to foil said dastardly plot. Here’s hoping they can reunite Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Costner.