Following last October’s announcement that the classic 1980’s action series MacGyver would be returning to CBS, news out of a Lionsgate analysts meeting this morning has revealed that the company is simultaneously planning a big-budget movie reboot of the show as well.
The movie will reportedly be produced by the show’s creator, Lee David Zlotoff, with Fast and Furious franchise producer Neal Moritz coming in to help as well. Although there was no confirmation of the plot for the film, since both the TV show and movie reboot will be created by Lionsgate, it seems that the studio is attempting to set up a new shared universe for the action-heavy franchise.
Regarding the television version, director James Wan (Furious 7, The Conjuring) has been chosen to direct the pilot of the show, with writer Paul Downs Colaizzo on script duties. Although Wan was previously attached to a MacGyver movie back in 2009, it failed to leave the ground he gave his vision for what the film could be, which may not be in line with what Lionsgate plans to do with the franchise now, but still remains an interesting insight for the possibility of both the show and movie.
“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?” says Wan. “He’s so smart he could never feel like he fit into a world that is an establishment. So he’s always a bit of an outsider. He’s very crafty, he’s very smart, all kinds of science and mathematics and engineering.
I wanted to put my MacGyver story around something like a ‘North by Northwest’: 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.”
Since both projects are freshly announced, it’s probably still going to be a bit of a wait for MacGyver fans to see new iterations on the classic source material. What do you think of the dual movie and TV announcements for the 80’s series, though: awesome, or too much at once? Let us know in the comments.
