You’d have thought Hollywood would have learnt. 2005 was a terrible year for the box office, and bad TV remakes were partly to blame. So making a Magnum PI film now would just be crazy, right?

Wrong – the Magnum PI movie is all ready to roll into action, with Rawson Marshall Thurber down to write and direct the film. Great – a film about a smug hairy man driving around in a Ferrari punching people and teaching women to snorkel just so he can stare at their bums. Why not just go all out and make Jeremy Clarkson: The Hollywood Years instead?

Magnum PI (DVDs) was basically one of the most ridiculous TV shows ever
created. Ostensibly a way to show that Vietnam veterans weren’t all
babbling outcasts and that actually, some of them got to live in massive
houses in Hawaii and wear awful shirts a lot – Magnum PI was actually
Scooby Doo with a nicer car and a moustache. And, for one deeply
unsettling episode, Angela Lansbury guest-starring as her Murder She
Wrote character on holiday in Hawaii.

And now Magnum PI is to be made into a movie – at the exact point in
history where audiences have realised that TV remake movies are usually
pretty dreadful. Last year, Bewitched and The Dukes Of Hazzard went
further than most to try and convince the world that making a movie out of an
old TV show is a waste of time. But there was a glimmer of hope for
Magnum PI – Rawson Marshall Thurber is down to write and direct. After all he made Dodgeball – and Magnum PI is
a series ripe for a good spoofing.

Not so. According to The Scotsman:

Rawson Marshall Thurber, who will write and direct the film, will
apparently stay true to the original tone of the show, which mixed
danger and humour, rather than making a spoof.

Universal,
the studio behind the Magnum movie, has revealed that the storyline
will involve Magnum looking for a missing friend with the help of his
former military buddies. That’s not a Magnum storyline, that’s a
storyline for The A Team.

Maybe we’re judging too soon. Maybe the Magnum PI movie will be a critical and commercial success. Or maybe we’re just saving time by slagging it now.

Still – great theme-tune, though.

Read more:

Magnum PI heading for silver screen – Scotsman

[story by Stuart Heritage]