Posted on 12/19/2016 2:30:15 PM PST by Red Badger
Sony Pictures Television is in very early stages of rebooting several classic sitcoms from TV legend Norman Lear as miniseries including All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Good Times Variety has learned exclusively.
The idea currently being discussed by Lear and Sony executives would be to have new actors recreate classic episodes of the shows, working from the original scripts, and package them as short, six-episode anthologies. The scripts would be treated similar to plays being mounted in new productions.
There is some talk about doing some of the original shows, redoing them with todays stars, Lear told Variety. There is a possibility that well do All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, Good Times.'
Discussions about remaking more of Lears catalogue come as Sony gears up for the premiere of the new One Day at a Time, which re-imagines Lears 80s sitcom about a single mother raising two children. The new series, which premieres on Netflix Jan. 6, focuses on a Latino family with a female Army veteran at its center.
Lear serves as executive producer on the new One Day at a Time, with original scripts coming from the shows writing staff and showrunners Gloria Calderon-Kellett and Mike Royce, with contributions from Lear.
Sony has been in discussions with Lear about the miniseries-reboot concept since before development began on One Day at a Time. That series was developed specifically for Netflix, and was never shopped to other buyers. No network or streaming service is yet attached to the miniseries projects.
The miniseries project is a separate idea from the possible All in the Family reboot that Lear discussed two years ago at a Paley Center event, which would have seen the show revived with new characters, possibly Latino. That idea was set aside in favor of the new One Day at a Time.
Were exploring it, Glenn Adilman, executive vice president of comedy development for Sony told Variety. Its sort of tricky to figure out what the business of that is and what that would be and how it would work. But its something were trying to figure out.
Adilman added, Its tricky for a lot of reasons, and its something were exploring.
Sony controls most of Lears TV library through its 1985 acquisition of the producers Embassy Communications.
Yeah, but it had Adrienne Barbeau.
Might as well redo Sanford and Son.
He’d be perfect for What’s Happening.
They will ruin these shows like they ruin everything else they remake. These shows were not politically correct.
More importantly, these shows were not mean.
Any thing concocted now will not understand that concept.
I laughed when Edith talked about Archie calling the dentist the tooth “fairy”. Lol.
No argument.
Might as well redo Sanford and Son......Oh, pulllleeeeze! We just had eight years of that old schtick!.
Because rebooting old movies is working out so well, I suppose?
Gloria is a tranny and Meathead has to have breast reduction surgery for his moobs.
Those should be registered as a deadly weapon!
She was definitely one of my big schoolboy crushes.
Then meathead converts to Islam and has to repress his urges to decapitate Archie.
Proving once again that there is no originality in Hollywood.
Sanford and Son itself was a Americanized version of a British sit-com....................
In the spin-off, Mike had left Gloria to live in a commune in Oregon with some young student of his (he was a professor of something in CA), leaving Gloria and his 7-8 year old son, so they moved back to NYC. The show also starred Burgess Meredith as a curmudgeonly veterinarian for whom she worked...............
OMG I LOVED these shows, it was a time when we had humor and could laugh at ourselves!!! The PC crowd heads will explode!!! George Jefferson was a hoot but I LOVED the maid Florence she was hysterical, George called the upstairs neighbors a mixed race couple Zebras FUNNY!!!! There is NO ONE in the world that could replace Archy that WILL BE impossible!!!
I don’t think they can recreate them with the same level of comedy AND comity the had then.
A 90’S show starring Henry Winkler as a conservative talk radio host, patterned after Archie Bunker, was a flop......
For me it was Mary Ann on Gillian’s Island :)
How 2016!
‘Good Times’ and ‘The Jeffersons’ were rather conservative weren’t they? It was about family and hard work being rewarded. Norman Lear turns 95 today actually.
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