Much like a Highlander, a new Fletch just won’t die; Heat Vision has reported that Warner Bros. Pictures is stepping up to the plate this time to get the project made, purchasing the rights to the Gregory McDonald mystery novels that the two Chevy Chase films in the 80’s were based off of.
Instead of trying to make a sequel or a reboot that sticks to the film’s version of the character (remember when Kevin Smith was supposed to be doing that?), the studio is looking at a “reimagining” rather than a simple reboot, meaning they are going to mine the 11 books published by McDonald and maybe stay closer to the novels as opposed to the Chase films, which focused more on the comedy than McDonald had originally. That’s good at least; it’s one thing to reboot something and stick to the original movies too closely, but at least they are trying to go at it in a different way and that involves at least a little creativity. As much creativity as adapting something that already exists can afford I guess.
For those of you who are too afraid of books, here’s the basic gist of the series of books: I.M. Fletch is an ace newspaper reporter with a knack for writing eye opening exposes while also dealing with two ex-wives who nag and do other ex-wife things. Sounds fun to me; but in this re-imagining, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Fletch either be a TV reporter or a blogger. No one will take a newspaper reporter seriously in 2011.
Do you want to see a new Fletch movie with a different take, or would you rather they just leave the character in peace?