Released in 1984 ‘Police Academy’ was a comedy that followed an eclectic bunch of recruits training to be cops with often disastrous results. Starring Steve Guttenberg and Kim Cattrall the film was a huge hit and spawned six more sequels a TV series and an animated series too. But as ever its a franchise ripe for a reboot and has been in the offing since 2003 and most recently its been comedy duo Michael Key and Jordan Peele who had been trying to get a reboot off the ground. So whatever happened to Key & Peele’s Police Academy reboot?
The original cast….
Produced by Paul Maslansky and directed by Hugh Wilson its important to remind ourselves of the cast that also included Bubba Smith, George Gaynes, David Graf and Marion Ramsey. Unfortunately all of them have passed away and its only Michael Winslow (he of the incredible vocal effects, Leslei Easterbrrok ( the busty but stern police instructor) and GW Bailey (the Captain who is always the butt of the jokes) are the only surviving support players with Guttenberg having departed the franchise after the fourth film.
So what happened to Key & Peele’s Police Academy reboot?
Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen were writing on a “Police Academy” reboot thatand would co-star with Michael Key and Jordan Peele as the leads. That was until the writers attended a meeting. Barinholtz explained, “Years ago, my partner and I got hired to rewrite ‘Police Academy’ for New Line Cinema,” Barinholtz said. “I don’t even know if he’s still alive, we might have to cut this, but the guy who created the original ‘Police Academy’ came with the deal. So they said to us, ‘We want you guys to write it and make it dirty, rated R, modern.’…..He’ll be at some of the meetings, but we don’t have to listen to him. All he wanted to do was give us notes: ‘But we would never do that in the first movie. Never, never, never. Oh no, no, no. Mahoney would never say that,’ and he was adamant that we would have the original cast in the movie.
He continued, ‘He wanted them to have big parts and we were ‘yada yada,’” Barinholtz continued. “So when we’re doing the pitch, my partner was like, ‘So we have this scene and that’s when we see all the original cast. We see Hightower, we see Tackleberry, we have…’ — he’s just naming all dead people. And I was like…he didn’t even do research to find out who’s still alive in the cast. He was not happy. But more importantly, as we were developing the film.
What ended any hope….
But what put a definite end to it was an incident on 9th August 2014 where an 18-year-old black man named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. A week of protests followed where the use of force by police was heavily debated. The officer in the case was investigated but never indicted of any civil rights offences. Consequently the project was dropped from further development and since then fatal incidents involving the likes of career criminal George Floyd have made the resurrection of the property unlikely.
related feature : Would Bobcat Goldthwait do a Police Academy reboot? He reveals all here!
related feature : ‘Hard Boiled’ – we take a look at the astonishing Hong Kong police actioner out on 4K UHD & Blu-Ray limited edition
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