The catch-22 of a MacGyver movie: if it’s done seriously, it’ll be shitty, and if it’s done as a semi-spoof (a la Starsky & Hutch) it’ll be shitty. I guess the catch is that it’ll be shitty.
But the low probability of a quality movie hasn’t stopped New Line (hey, I thought y’all were dead) from developing – along with Dino De Laurentiis’ daughter- a big screen version of the show that was wildly popular with housewives, grandmas and stoners. You may remember that the basic premise of MacGyver was that Richard Dean Anderson was an android who got a career in Hollywood and then was hired to be the star of a TV series about a guy who could make explosives, gadgets and other sorely needed items out of household materials. In other words, it was a whole show that was set in the weekly montage when the A-Team made weapons in a barn.
The Hollywood Reporter article about this poor decision of a movie makes it sound like they’re going spoofy: No writer is attached, but the studio hopes to find a script that
can acknowledge how the concept has staked a place into pop culture
yet still makes for a serious and fun adventure movie.
Meanwhile, at the very end of the article, exists the quote that I think was the actual impetus for this entire announcement: giving a New Line exec to appear witty in print.
“We think we’re a stick of chewing gum, a paper clip and an A-list
writer away from a global franchise,” said New Line’s Richard
Brener, who will oversee with Sam Brown and Walter Hamada.
I mean, there can’t have been any other reason to go ahead with this, right?