Ideally things that should be rebooted are ideas that were god but not executed as well as they could be. Battlestar Galactica was something that should have been rebooted; Ghostbusters was not. Here are a few properties that could make for good Reboots:
Logan’s Run. A Sci Fi world where people are ceremonially killed after they turn thirty. I could see this make for a fun Movie or TV series.
Sliders. Alternate realities is an untapped Sci fi staple. This would make for an awesome TV series with some real sci fi and historical thinkers n the staff.
Dresden Files. The series with Paul Blackthorne was good, but could have been better. It needed to be much darker than it was. And, after hearing him speak with a thick New Jersey accent in Arrow, it’s just weird going back to Dresden Files and hearing him talk in a flat American accent…
Battlestar Galactica. Bring back the murderous toaster men (which is what Cylons ARE), and stop pretending that they have enough subtlety to disguise themselves as attractive humans.
I’d like to see scanners redone with more of a budget. I just watched it again the other night. The story itself is fairly decent. But the head explosion and eye popping scenes were so awesome that rest of the movie was a disappointment. Maybe if they had more money to do more more of that fun stuff (though not CGI, ideally, except minamally), I’d go see it.
I would like to see some of the old matinee serials done as cable-TV series. Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, done with a Game of Thrones budget. Dick Tracy, done with a Boardwalk Empire budget.
There have been rumors of a new Doc Savage movie. People have been drooling over the thought of Chris Hemsworth as the star. I am less concerned with the actor, than with the writer, director, and producer. George Pal botched his movie pretty badly.
The book Logans’ Run had some ideas that were impossible to film in 1976. With modern sfx, it could be spectacular.
Babylon 5. This time, film all five seasons in one shot. That way, you don’t have to re-write major plots when a key actor leaves. Also, you don’t have to rush to finish the main plot in Season 4, leaving Season 5 to limp along with the secondary plots.
I want to see a movie about Tonto and his faithful white companion, the Lone Ranger.
I want to see a movie where Fu Manchu is the protagonist, and Nayland Smith is the antagonist.
Wouldn’t you have to change the characters quite a bit? Fu Manchu was a criminal mastermind and multiple murderer by proxy. Is he now to become something else, like a Chinese patriot? It sounds like it would be completely different characters with the same names.
I’ve occasionally wondered if any of those high-concept sitcoms of the '60s could be redone (either as comedies or dramas) by taking the concept seriously. What are the modern, television possibilities of seven people marooned on an island, a back-woods family that found oil on their land, or an advertising executive whose wife was a witch?
Apparently we’re getting a dark reboot of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, starring Kiernan Shipka (Dan Draper’s daughter in Mad Men).
Real Beverly Hillbillies would buy new clothes, learn how modern shit works, buy new cars, and eventually even their homespun good naturedness would be corrupted by LA and they’d turn into the Kardashians.
Hmm. and then they’d get a reality series. Very Meta!
As for Gilligan, if the entire show was about the realities of finding food and shelter and having sex with each other in various pairings (and threesomes…), then there’d be no time for wacky adventures. They’d all be dead from Japanese soldiers, crazy apes, radioactive seeds, etc.
And they’d vote Gilligan off the island, so to speak. Permanently.
Bewitched and Jeannie might work well, though, done seriously.
You could do it as kind of a coming-of-age for the kids; Elly Mae and Jethro trying to fit in at school, that sort of thing. Call it Beverly Hills, E-I-E-I-O.
But seriously, folks. Just about any show can sound trivial and ridiculous if try. How 'bout we make a show about the wacky high jinks of a mobster who’s seeing a psychiatrist? You can make a great show about anything, or a sucky show about anything. With the right people making it, I could envision a decent reboot of The Beverly Hillbillies, or just about anything else.
Funnily enough, this is precisely the one I was going to mention…watching the original series right now (in the middle of season 3, where it starts to go from ‘unfulfilled potential’ to ‘actually kinda crap’, and my viewing started getting spotty the first time around).
I’d even redo some specific episodes, such as Fever. (Just, like…acknowledge penicillin allergies. Could even be used for drama.)
Generally, make the worlds more internally consistent - ‘Brooks Sisters’ is a gag that belongs on the world where gender dynamics are reversed, not the one where there was a gendercide just a few years prior, and a world where non-avian dinosaurs never went extinct needs some explanation as to how humans still managed to evolve, frex - and actually acknowledge and milk it when they hit a world where the laws of physics are seriously different (such as Dragonslide) - will they even be able to open a portal?! - or else stick to purely historical divergences.
Either drop the Kromaggs or think them through a lot more thoroughly.
E L Doctorow felt that his novel “Ragtime” should have been a 10 part miniseries instead of a theatrical film. The film had interesting casting but was a wet firecracker
There was a TV series in 1978 called “What really happened to the class of 1965” based on a 1976 book by Michael Medved and David Wallechinsky that followed up students at Pacific Palisades High school profiled in a 1965 “Time” magazine story. As I understand it, the shirts put pressure on the producers to have happy uplifting stories and the reviewer in “TV Guide” said it was another example of TV turning steak into hamburger.
I’d love them to bring back Quantum Leap. I really enjoyed it the first time around especially when they started dealing with non-trivial events like the JFK assassination or Elvis. As long as I never hear “evil female leaper”, I’m cool.
A similar concept was the '60s show the Time Tunnel.
I would love to see a re-boot of the home decorating show Trading Spaces. In the new version though, it would feature neighbors that actively hate each other. One would say “I’m seeing last days of Caligula meets Barney.” and the other team would counter with “How about London, during the blitz.”