Wanna see a movie starring both Denzel Washington and Will Smith? Yeah, I do too. Well, it seems the two actors are thinking about teaming up for a remake of the 1974 movie Uptown Saturday Night. Pajiba reports that Will Smith’s production company picked up the rights to make a new version of the film in 2002. with the hope of putting together a sort of African American Ocean’s 11. While it’s been on the back-burner since then, there now appears to be some new movement.
The rumour is that the producers are looking for a new writer to overhaul Mark and Robb Cullen’s script and that Denzel is now loosely attached to the movie. At the moment everything’s all in the very early stages and it may never happen, but just the idea of a Washington and Smith is a very intriguing notion so it’s worth reporting anyway. Denzel has previously mentioned in interviews that he is working on a comedy with Smith, and it seems Uptown Saturday Night is what he was talking about.
The original 1974 Uptown Saturday Night also had a bit of a dream cast, with Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, Harry Belafonte, Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor teaming up for a film about two men who go to an illegal nightclub and get robbed there. However when one of them realises his stolen wallet contained a winning lottery ticket, they set out to recover it from the thieves.
Nothing about the proposed remake has yet been officially announced, so at the moment this is all rumour and it may well be that the project never gets off the ground – after all, if it’s been hanging around since 2002, it doesn’t suggest there’s a massive amount of impetus behind it – but even if they don’t make Uptown Saturday Night, it would be great if Smith and Washington get to work together someday.