It's become quite sad how strapped for ideas Hollywood has become. Not content with raiding everything from our childhoods – Transformers, Thundercats, The Smurfs – and not even leaving it alone after travesties such as Starsky and Hutch or Miami Vice, the top bods have had to look to things that haven't even left the collective consciousness of the public.
Take the Sex and the City movie, for example. Rehashing a series that had finished on TV less than five years previously seemed to hecklerspray as something of a cynical cash-in. And it worked. Did it ever work . So who can blame the struggling execs in tinseltown for turning to another much-loved TV property with a push at converting it for the big screen, even though the topsoil on its grave is still fresh?
Yes, friends, there are rumours they're re-doing Friends. But for now, even though everyone in the world seems to be harping on about it, these rumours are nothing but that. There may be hope yet.
When it comes to barely-even-dead TV shows heading to the big screen there are few occasions when it's a genuinely good idea. The Sex and the City film proved it was a lucrative idea, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good one. It does if you're a money-hoarding twit, mind, but if you have any integrity whatsoever it's probably better to leave these projects alone. Let them die, especially when they went on for ten years and tied up every loose end imaginable over the course.
Don't re-open the wounds, don't rehash the same storylines, don't break up the established relationships and don't create new problems from lives that fans of the show have accepted as being 'on course'. Oh, and retroactively: don't give Joey a spin-off. It won't work. hecklerspray feared the worst when rumours popped up earlier this week that all of those sins were about to be committed in one glorious two-hour epic of utterly unbelievable lives, 'being there for yoooou' and Phoebe being a shit character.
But thank crikey if there haven't been two massive wedges of sense in the space of a day – first the tabloid 'zines turn down messr Lohan's approaches to sell the story of the child that may not even be his, and now it would seem that the raping of an only very recently dead TV corpse is to be left alone. For the time being, at least. Matthew Perry – or Chandler, or that one off that cancelled TV show that was quite good, for those who don't know him outside of Friends (i.e. most people, thanks to his stellar movie career) – has a publicist, Lisa Kasteler, and she said these words using her mouth:
"Nothing is happening in this regard, so the rumour is false."
She couldn't have put it better if she tried. Well, she could – she could have swore or something, as we all know swearing is fucking cool. But for 'getting straight to the point' points, she scores high.
But this leaves something of a void in the minds of the Hollywood decision-makers. Well, we should say 'more of a void than the normal vacuous space that should resemble the creative part of a human brain in the minds of the Hollywood decision-makers'. Without a tried-and-tested formula, what can they do? Come up with something new? Do a sequel? Release the same rom-com again with a different title?
hecklerspray has a suggestion, one that we're willing to give up for free, just this once. It covers the TV-remake base and has genuine potential, as well as being a worthy transition from small to big screen, not just a bloated cash-in.
Arrested Development: The Movie.
Make that and most of your sins for being rubbish bastards will be forgiven.