CA, in its day, managed to get itself kindasorta more-or-less taken seriously as a kind of detective show with T&A supplements . . . Whaddaya want, it was the '70s . . . But by 2000 it was ready for a heavily-lampshaded semi-serious retro-comic film treatment. (With even hotter chix! 
)
What is being shown now, I wonder, that will someday seem like a fitting vehicle for that?
CSI, possibly.
20 years? Hollywood is desperate for new things to remake. I’m betting we’ll see a movie remake of, I don’t know, House, or Castle in less than five years.
Yeah, my money’s on Castle.
You know, I’m not sure ANYTHING currently on TV will get that kind of treatment, because the nature of TV has changed so much since the Seventies.
I’m 50, and when I was a kid, there were only 3 major networks. As a result, there were loads of TV shows that EVERYBODY watched, and many more that everyone of a certain demographic watched. In the early Seventies, a HUGE percentage of kids watched “The Brady Bunch,” for instance. Hence, twenty years after it went off the air, a “Brady Bunch” movie made sense, because there were tens millions of 30-somethings who had nostalgic feelings for that show.
Today, there are so many TV stations that no one show commands the same kind of mass audience. The highest rated shows today don’t get NEARLY as big a percentage of the viewing audience as “All in the Family” or “MAS*H” used to. And in twenty years, there just won’t be NEARLY as many nostalgic 30-something “Glee” fans out there as there once were nostalgic “Charlie’s Angels” fans.
Hollywood makes old TV shows into movies because they hope to attract all the millions of people who used to be devotees of the show. But today, wheneven HIT television nshows don’t draw as many people as “Starsky and Hutch” used to, there’s not so much incentive to make movies based on them.
In 20 years they’ll probably still be talking about plans for Arrested Development and Party Down movies.
I’d like to see Good Morning, Vietnam remade as what Mr. Cronauer originally intended (i.e.: MAS*H takes over WKRP). Something tells me his screenplay no longer exists, though.
Seth Rogen would be great in the lead.
24 would, probably, be the likeliest contender. Obviously, they would have to change the title to Jack Bauer or something.
For any show to get picked up, it has to have something iconic about it, not just be good or memorable. Bauer fits that.
Iron Chef.
It would probably involve giant space robots and such.
Your post reminded me of a bit of trivia about Good Morning, Vietnam. Robin Williams was not the first choice to play Cronauer. Instead, it was supposed to be Bill Murray.
I am not sure nostalgia will work the same way going forward. People have fond memories for old things because they haven’t seen them in a long time. With everything archived on the internet now, that won’t happen anymore. If you want to see a show you remember form when you are a kid, you will be able to.
That said, originality in Hollywood seems to be dead so everything is going to get recycled over and over until people stop paying to see it.
Well, with the current and advancing TV ennui and market, I could see the Mission Impossible franchise coming full circle from ancient series, to modern Theater Blockbuster, all the way back to a TV series -perhaps somewhere stylistically between Burn Notice, Homeland, and Battlestar Galactica from a Director’s and Producer’s vision. But I don’t think that is really what you asked.
What I’m asking specifically is, what’s on TV, etc., now, that might, in 20 years or so, get a retro-comic treatment based on everything essential to it being now markedly dated and markedly characteristic of its period, in a "Boy, they could only have made that then!" kind of way? Which is essentially what happened to Charlie’s Angels, The Brady Bunch, etc.
Too true. You’re spot on.
Well, maybe working from that definition, I could see a Breaking Bad Vehicle, only focusing on Hank and Jesse’s Children dealing more realistically with the Opiate and Psych Drug addiction of America and the Underground… a Breaking Bad series but more in the tradition of Requiem for a Dream. Maybe add in Opal and Maastricht character versions of the lewdly insane and affected by modern medicine and its plastics. Nip Tuck.
Jersey Shore.
I just had the thought of NCIS: The Motion Picture. The climax of the film , of course , wouild have agent Gibbs pursue the bad guy on his own F-35B into hostile airspace before they post land and get into a knock down drag out fight. in tanks, blowing up the countryside.
CSI, I’m guessing.
Or, if you really want to get grim, some show that tries to have a social conscience. Especially if the original was really sincere about it.
Well, in 20 years with global warming, it might be Pennsylvania Shore…
If you want something that was on recently, I can see a movie in 20 years ago about middle age Fat Anthony Soprano and Miss Meadow as leading criminal lawyer for the Mob. His main adversary will be that interior decorator who was a hero in Czechoslovakia that has returned from the Pine Barrens.