A Ben Stiller And Owen Wilson Classic Is Being Rebooted Into A Series
The Ben Stiller & Owen Wilson comedy classic, Starsky & Hutch, is now becoming a gender-swapped series.
A remake is getting a remake, though that’s kind of par for the course in Hollywood. The latest in this trend of recycling old ideas is Starsky & Hutch, the buddy cop tv series that turned into a buddy cop movie starring Zoolander stars Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, which Screenrant reports is turning into a buddy cop tv series again. This time they’re girls though, which isn’t exactly the most original twist in history, but it’s a change from the original, nonetheless.
The remake series, which is being produced by FOX, has Prodigal Son’s Sam Sklaver and The Resident’s Elizabeth Peterson as its writers and showrunners. The series will follow Sasha Starsky and Nicole Hutchinson, the gender-swapped versions of the original roles. The actresses who will play the roles, last held by Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, haven’t been announced yet.
Gender Swapped TV series and films are nothing new, the most famous (or infamous) probably being the 2016 Ghostbusters. The film received positive reviews, but it was subject to massive social media backlash for replacing its iconic cast with its female counterparts. However, since neither Ben Stiller nor Owen Wilson is particularly well-known for their roles in Starsky & Hutch, it’s unlikely that the upcoming remake will receive much backlash from audiences.
While modern audiences might best remember the 2004 adaptation that starred Ben Stiller as David Starsky and Owen Wilson as Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson, the series dates back to the 1970s. The show, which began its life as a TV movie, was something of a revolutionary idea at the time — showing two police officers who acted more like good friends instead of the stoic professionals typically portrayed on TV. The series’ action-heavy plots were usually taken from scripts that were intended to be made into feature films, resulting in higher-quality writing than was usually seen on TV during the 70s.
While the original series had a somewhat serious (if jovial) tone, the Ben Stiller/Owen Wilson film took a more comedic approach to the story. Acting as a prequel to the original series, the film played up the conflicting personalities of the two characters, with Starsky’s reckless machismo clashing against Hutch’s easy-going attitude to comedic effect.
The film received mixed reviews. The plot was viewed as somewhat aimless, but the comedic chemistry between Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson was widely praised.
The 2003 Starsky & Hutch film followed a trend in the early 2000s of creating comedic remakes of 1970s TV series. Series such as The Dukes of Hazzard and Charlie’s Angels were given similar treatments, with familiar modern faces lampooning the roles originally played in the 1970s. However, very few of those films were well-received, with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson being two of the lucky few actors whose remake was given any amount of positive critical attention.
There’s currently no planned release date for the new Starsky & Hutch series — Fox is apparently still waiting to see scripts from its writers before it moves forward with production. But if it ends up making its way to TV, it’ll be the first time we saw any version of the duo in 20 years. Whether the series will replace Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in audience’s minds remains to be seen.
