‘Starsky & Hutch’: Fox Developing Remake Of Classic Buddy Cop Drama
It was only a matter of time… We’ve had ‘Hawaii Five-O’ and ‘Magnum PI’, now ‘Starsky & Hutch’ could be the next cop drama to land the remake treatment.
For those of you who were not around in the 70s, the original series followed two Southern California police detectives – David Michael Starsky, played by Paul Michael Glaser, and Kenneth Richard “Hutch” Hutchinson, played by David Soul. Known for tearing up the streets of the fictional “Bay City” in Starsky’s Ford Gran Torino, Starsky’s intense, streetwise Brooklyn attitude, paired with Hutch’s reserved and intellectual Minnesota charm, made them the quintessential “buddy cop” duo.
This potential remake would gender-flip the lead roles, following two female detectives, Sasha Starsky and Nicole Hutchinson. The duo would solve crimes in the offbeat town of Desert City while staying true to their friendship, their awesomeness, and somehow also trying to unravel the mystery behind who sent their fathers to prison 15 years ago for a crime they didn’t commit.
The series comes from Sam Sklaver and Elizabeth Peterson, who serve as writers and showrunners, and it will be produced by Sony Pictures Television and Fox Entertainment. Sklaver is best known as writer/showrunner for ‘Prodigal Son’, whilst Peterson served as co-EP on ‘Prodigal Son’, along with working on ‘The Resident’ and ‘The Newsroom’.
The original show ran on ABC from 1975-1979, and was created by William Blinn. There was also a film version in 2004, which took a rather more comedic approach, and saw Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson tackle the title roles.
The project is being developed under a “script-to-series” model, meaning they forego the traditional pilot process in favour of opening writers’ rooms which develops scripts for several episodes and map out a potential first season. Those are then presented to the network (Fox) which then decides if they will move straight-to-series, or ditch the project.
‘Starsky & Hutch’ is classed as “in development” at the moment, so may not go to series, but we’ll let you know if/when we hear more.
