For years there’s been talk of a reboot of Fletch, based on the Gregory McDonald mystery novels which found success on the big screen in the 80s with a couple of Chevy Chase movies. While the Weinsteins owned the rights, directors such as Kevin Smith and Steve Pink, and stars like Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, Zach Braff and even Joshua Jackson came and went, but they never found a way to make it happen.
Now the Weinsteins have given up completely, but that doesn’t mean everyone in Hollywood thinks there’s no future in the franchise, as THR reports that Warner Bros. has preemptively picked up the rights. There’s no writer or director attached yet, but it appears the studio is thinking big, hoping they can ‘make an smart action comedy that plays out on a bigger canvas than the previous movies’.
In the books, Irwin Fletch Fletcher starts out as a reporter investigating crime, before becoming a bit of a globetrotting writer, who tends to stumble onto mysteries. He also spends a lot of time trying to avoid the headaches caused by his two ex-wives. It’s not known exactly what direction Warner will take, or even whether they’ll stick to the plots of the book. Hopefully though they’ll have more luck than the Weinsteins, who tried just about every permutation but couldn’t find one everybody agreed upon.