Don't look now, but that 'American Gladiators' movie adaptation you heard about last spring is actually moving forward.Variety reports that writer Peter Iliff ('Patriot Games,' 'Varsity Blues,' 'Under Suspicion') has been hired to adapt the cheesy 1990s TV game show into a live-action film. There's also a release-date target: sometime in 2011.
In case you haven't heard, Johnny Ferraro, producer of the 'American Gladiators' TV show that ran in syndication in the U.S. from 1989-1996, on the NBC network schedule for two Hulk-Hogan-hosted cycles starting last year, plans on making a 'Gladiators' movie.
He's enlisted the help of producer Scott Mednick, who has already successfully transitioned the 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' franchise onto the big screen. Mednick also has credits on '300,' 'Superman Returns' and 'Where the Wild Things Are.'
Details are still sketchy, since there's still no script, but the plan seems to be to adapt the muscular body builders and wannabe porn stars for the original TV runs – who went by names like "Hammer," "Beast," "Mayhem," "Phoenix" and "Venom" -- into movie superheroes.
On the surface, this may seem like a waste of production dollars. After all, NBC wasn't entirely successful in rekindling interest in the 'Gladiators' brand recently.
But hold onto your spandex. NBC has a lot of trouble launching anything these days, and the 'Gladiators' brand carries weight internationally.
In addition to a solid seven-year weekly syndication run, which had a decent core audience in the States, 'Gladiators' was distributed into more than 90 countries, 14 of which adapted the format themselves.
In case you never caught the show, it revolved around Average Joe contestants, who would try to beat a regular crew of muscular "gladiators" in numerous challenges in order to win cash prizes. Challenges included things like trying to get past a hulking gladiator on a balance beam.
Reader Comments (1)
Robert at 1:34AM on Nov 24th 2009
I wonder if they'll bring back Steel (Jonathan Byrne). He wasn't in too many episodes, but he is hilarious. His personal life is even better. Always getting arrested and popping up in weird places with really weird ideas.