Paramount Wants a Miracle, They’re Trying to Reboot The Saint
The Saint has had quite a number of films, not to mention a famous television show, but it seems as if Paramount sees opportunity in starting over.
Deadline reports:
The last time I wrote about The Saint, Mace Neufeld, Bill McDonald, Robert Evans, and David Brown were producing it with Val Kilmer. As we know in Hollywood, everything old is new (re-imagined, remade, revamped, rebooted) again and so it goes with the espionage thriller The Saint, for which Paramount has just secured the book series rights. Producing deals are being closed now.
As Deadline also notes, The Saint is prime franchise material. Get the right creative team and actors involved and you could have a new Bourne or Bond type series worth billions. Then again, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. reboot failed to excite recently so it could also go in that direction.
Back in 2013 (yeesh, time flies!) I reported on a reboot of The Saint featuring Adam Rayner from Doctor Who’s “The Unicorn and the Wasp” as Simon Templar, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Eliza Dushku, and previous Saint Sir Roger Moore. It was a pilot/TV movie but it never wound up being broadcast.
Now it must also be said, I am a big fan of the 1997 film starring Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue. I think it’s thrilling and hysterical and there’s nothing else like it. I’m fine with that being my Saint go-to.
What are your thoughts on The Saint being rebooted?
(via /Film)
I try not to condemn any project before it is even planned out. I have smirk-enducing memories of people saying that any remake of “The Italian Job” could only suck. This concept has held up well in most of its incarnations and I’d love to see it done well again.
Here’s an update on some stuff that apparently happened before some of youse guys were born, therefore… it’s like it didn’t happen? I guess? Seriously?
The Saint is a series of books written by Eurasian novel and screen writer Leslie Charteris, starting with “Meet the Tiger” in 1928. The books were quite popular, so it was turned into a radio series starring Vincent Price in the 40s and a black & white television series staring Roger Moore in the early 60s. Then the more recent stuff mentioned above happened. (Personally, when I watch Moore in Bond movies, I always think of it as a Simon Templar “The Saint” movie where Templar is making believe he’s some guy named Bond, James Bond.)
Saying that nobody should do a current media whatever based on The Saint because “Val Kilmer!” reasons is like saying “We shouldn’t do any more Sherlock Holmes stuff because Jeremy Brett, who played Holmes on PBS back in the 80s, was so the best.” In fact, I distinctly remember having a conversation with someone who thought the BBC and PBS shouldn’t have bothered doing the Jeremy Brett Holmes series because, they said, Basil Rathebone was the definitive Holmes and nobody was going to accept a new guy playing him. I *headdesk*ed back then, too.
An interesting note about The Saint’s author: he was an author of color, his father was a Chinese doctor. Mr. Charteris and his daughter were both denied citizenship in the US for years despite moving there in 1932 because of the Chinese Exclusion Act which forbade anyone with “too much” Chinese ancestry from becoming a citizen. Congress eventually passed a specific bill personally naturalizing them, which is quite horrible, but does show how popular his work was at the time.
Just because it wasn’t mentioned doesn’t mean we don’t know the origins. :)
Sure, but NOT mentioning the origins makes “don’t do a new movie because there’s already one and it stars my crush” sound even sillier than it already is. It’s like avoiding mentioning something because if you mention it, it disproves your point! Not cool!
Also? So tired of people who post articles acting like if something didn’t happen post-sentience for them, it didn’t happen. It’s really kinda self-centered and it’s very common. Mr. Charteris was a writer of color who experienced real and insulting discrimination in his lifetime, and in my opinion, he should be right up there being celebrated with Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason), and Agatha Christie (SO MANY GREAT CHARACTERS) for creating a character who came to life for millions of people. He wrote almost 100 Saint novels and stories in his lifetime!
And admit it, it’s kinda cool knowing that Vincent Price played The Saint!
I want the Eliza Dushku one!!!
Will Smith as Raffles.
There, I just made Hollywood a billion dollars. Just send me a check for my cut.
I loved the movie from the 90s. Heck, I still need to get it on blu ray, so this is a nice reminder… but I have no interest in a reboot of the franchise personally.
You don’t. *clap* Remake. *clap* Val. *clap* Kilmer. *clap* movies.
It was stupid with TOP GUN (that is still in development hell, somehow), and it’s stupid now.
They can come for Real Genius from cold, dead hands.
Here’s hoping Willow gets a sequel and not a reboot either.
I predicted long back when Disney bought Lucasfilm that they would be looking at Willow as a move to be made against the LotR franchise. I still think it may happen.
The Saint was hardly a Val Kilmer movie, more a movie with Val Kilmer in it.
If you can’t do it with Eliza Dushku, then it can’t be done.
Is also a great song.