Break out your “I love Sleestacks!” hat, Land of the Lost is back! It was more than two years ago that we heard a movie version of the low-budget, live-action, Saturday morning series might be headed towards theaters with Will Ferrell. Now that rumor has finally come to fruition.
Variety says that Universal, as part of their pre-strike mad scramble for anything and everything they can find to throw up on theater screens, has greenlit the movie with a hefty $100 million budget. Brad Silberling is set to direct, and Ferrell will finally do a movie that doesn’t involve making fun of a third-rate sport.
The original Land of the Lost television show was first broadcast in 1974, but the show existed long afterwards in reruns, eventually becoming something of a cult classic. It was eventually remade in 1991. Created by the great Sid and Marty Krofft, the show followed the adventures of a father, son, and daughter who become trapped on an alien world inexplicably filled with stop-motion dinosaurs, cavemen, and strange (poorly realized), aggressive alien creatures called Sleestaks. The show wasn’t a comedy, but since Ferrell’s involved it’s a sure bet that the movie will be.
Apparently not only will Ferrell’s movie be a comedy, but it’s tossing out the plot of the original series. Forget the family element. In the movie version we’ll be watching a disgraced paleontologist, his assistant, and a macho tour guide who find themselves in a strange world inhabited by dinos, monkey people, and those rascally, reptilian Sleestaks.
Like all of you, I’m sick of watching Hollywood take a big dump on classic television by turning serious shows into lame parodies. However, as a kid sitting in front of the TV in my feetie pajamas with a bowl of cereal, even then I knew the show’s special effects were lousy and the stories were sort of shoddy. Land of the Lost is just begging for a parody. It’d be nice if they kept the family element, since that was always one of the best thing about the series; but come on, who cares, it’s Land of the Lost. Bring on the Sleestaks, I’m ready to laugh.
