It’s that time of the week again, when we talk about a classic TV series getting the invevitable reboot treatment with one big variation. In this instance, the gloriously ridiculous action adventure series MacGyver is in the hot seat, which was heated up by a magnifying glass, the sun, and a safety pin. The big change? It’ll have a female lead, and you, dear reader, could be the one writing the pilot.
“The Next MacGyver” is a crowdsourcing competition aiming to bring another brilliant and inspirational engineer to the forefront of a TV series, as MacGyver is still beloved today all over the world, and is responsible for bringing untold numbers of viewers to engineering fields. Combine that with an effort to get more female protagonists on TV, and we might have the next great action series.
Here’s how the competition works. Create an idea for a show that revolves around a female protagonist that will motivate generations of TV viewers with her engineering skills; it doesn’t have to resemble MacGyver in the least, and can fall into technically any genre. And since MacGyver was a spy whose skillset involves engineering, the main character doesn’t have to be an engineer per se. But it does have to be compelling to middle school and high school audiences, since inspiration is key.
Come up with a title, a logline, a pilot synopsis, and brief descriptions for future episodes, and send your ideas to The Next MacGyver website. The contest ends on April 17, at which point twelve finalists will be named. The finalists will be whittled down to five, with each winner earning $5,000 and the chance to talk with a Hollywood producer and a distinguished engineer. At this point, the winners would develop a story outline and write a final draft of a pilot script. Judges will then decide which one is the best, and assuming everything goes splendidly, the pilot would go into some form of production.
Check out the promo video below.
The Next MacGyver is being spearheaded by MacGyver creator Lee Zlotoff, who is teaming up with The National Academy of Engineering, The USC Viterbi School of Engineering and The MacGyver Foundation, which supports people and organizations that better people’s lives through self-sustainability and self-reliance. Considering how few American engineer students there are as compared to some other first world nations, here’s hoping a TV show can flip things around for the better.
All in all, this project sounds a hell of a lot more intriguing than a MacGyver movie or something else that tried to specifically bring Richard Dead Anderson’s character back in some form. That said, we’ll always take a MacGruber sequel.
