We’ve been hearing rumors of an impending Magnum P.I. movie adaptation for a few years now, but after a lot of debate over whether Tom Selleck should be allowed to play him, the buzz on the film seemed to die down. But apparently the project isn’t dead, since Variety is reporting that Rawson Marshall Thurber has just been hired to write and direct the TV to movie flick.
The bad news here is that Rawson Marshall Thurber is the guy behind the wildly overrated 2003 comedy Dodgeball. If he’s in charge of the Magnum project, that almost certainly means we’re in for another horrible parody of a classic eighties television show. We’ve seen it with everything from Starsky & Hutch to The Brady Bunch, and the television show parody movie is an idea that’s long since worn out its welcome.
Frankly, turning the series into a joke is spectacularly disrespectful to the show, its stars, and its fans. Hopefully, Tom Selleck stays far far away from this impending pile of crap, and isn’t lured into a cameo the way the now very old stars of Starsky & Hutch were for the film that made fun of their television show.
The original series starred Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a Vietnam vet turned private eye living in Hawaii. It’s the role Selleck turned down Indiana Jones for, and while in retrospect that might not have been the best decision, the show was wildly successful and turned Selleck into a major star. And now, it’s going to be clumsily mocked.
Update! Thurber has since gone on record to say that he wants to do a serious adaptation that's true to the television series. Could he be joking? You don't hire the director of Dodgeball to make a serious movie.
