Last year Edgar Wright told me that he though they could possibly stop McSpaced, the US version of his classic TV show Spaced, from ever happening. It turns out that trying to stop McSpaced is like trying to wish away cancer – you can’t do it.
The show is moving forward, despite the cries of rage from a million fans. The American version of the show will be produced by the guy behind Will & Grace and will be from McG’s production company, and it is almost certainly going to lose every single bit of the charm, wonder and magic of the original. Here’s what Edgar has to say on his MySpace blog:
For anyone who missed my previous blogs, me, Simon [Pegg], Jessica [Stevenson] and Nira [Park] are not involved in any way, shape or form.
And neither do we want to be.
That show was very personal to us.
It’s about Simon and Jessica, not just some format or high concept.
It pains me to see it reduced to this…
“Single-cam half-hour revolves around a young man and woman who pose as a couple in order to rent a cheap apartment.”
Feel free to vent. I haven’t got the energy right now.
I continue to wonder what the exact point of remaking Spaced is – without the genius of the people involved and their very specific nerdy pop culture sensibilities, you’re left with a generic sitcom concept that doesn’t really have a ton of US name recognition. It’s the execution that makes Spaced special, not the idea of two people pretending to be a couple to get a cheap apartment.
It’s Edgar, Simon and Jessica who are really getting the shortest end of this stick, since Spaced wasn’t something they did for the money but was a project that meant a lot to them, and as Edgar says, was about them. Some people are saying that the up side of this is that more folks will be turned on to the original, but I feel like there is no up side. Unless a plane full of gay rapists crashes into the studio where the pilot is being shot on the day McG is visiting. And McG survives the crash and is trapped in the rubble with the rapists for a week. That’s an up side.
By the way, it looks good for a Spaced DVD release in the near future. We’ll keep you updated.