'80s TV Revival: 15 Movies We Want to See
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Designing Women
Original stars Dixie Carter, Delta Burke, Annie Potts, Jean Smart, Alice Ghostley, Meshach Taylor
New stars Katherine Heigl, Jennifer Hudson, Amy Adams, Kristin Wiig, Catherine O'Hara, and Zach Galifianakis
The Pitch Hot-tempered Julia Sugarbaker (Heigl) and her stepsister, former Miss Georgia World Suzanne Sugarbaker (Hudson), work at their interior design firm with single-mom designer Mary Jo (Adams), absentminded office manager Charlene (Wiig), daffy family friend Bernice (O'Hara), and openly gay assistant Anthony (Galifianakis). When a crosstown designing rival and runner-up to Suzanne for Miss Georgia World (Elizabeth Banks) threatens to steal all their clients and Julia's fiancé (Josh Duhamel), these designing women rally together to defeat her.
Directed by Adam Shankman
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Matlock
Original star Andy Griffith
New star Morgan Freeman
The Pitch In a darker take on the beloved Atlanta defense attorney, Ben Matlock (Freeman) is as folksy as he is famous — ever since he successfully defended a college friend on trial for the rape and murder of several young women, Matlock has never lost a case. But after DNA evidence turns up incontrovertibly implicating that old friend Matlock successfully defended four decades earlier in another unsolved murder, the old-school lawyer will have to marshal all his talents to save his friend (Tommy Lee Jones) — and his reputation.
Directed by Clint Eastwood
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Bosom Buddies
Original stars Tom Hanks, Peter Scolari
New stars Michael Cera, Jonah Hill
The Pitch In a remake actually set in 1982, aspiring adman Kip Wilson (Cera) and his aspiring-novelist best friend Henry Desmond (Hill) discover a small, women-only apartment complex in San Francisco with insanely low rent and decide to dress in drag so they can live there. No one buys it for a second, but the manager (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is so tickled by them that she persuades all the other women to pretend that they're fooled. Things get complicated, though, when Kip falls for his next-door neighbor (Anna Kendrick), and she falls for him too.
Directed by David Gordon Green
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Remington Steele
Original stars Pierce Brosnan, Stephanie Zimbalist
New stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Megan Fox
The Pitch No one will take Laura Holt (Fox) seriously as a private investigator — probably all those lingerie ads she did as a young model. So when she catches a dashing con-man (Rhys Meyers) who looks the part completely, she blackmails him into becoming her ''partner'' with the improbably perfect alias Remington Steele. Little did either of them realize their professional arrangement would become so personal.
Directed by Doug Liman
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Murder, She Wrote
Original star Angela Lansbury
New star Meryl Streep
The Pitch People keep dying around internationally famous mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher (Streep), and she keeps sleuthing out the killers far better than the police ever can. It doesn't take long for her new assistant (Scarlett Johansson) to begin wondering if her boss is so good at ''finding'' the ''evidence'' of these murders for a much more sinister reason.
Directed by Nora Ephron
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Moonlighting
Original stars Cybill Shepherd, Bruce Willis
New stars Rachel McAdams, Bradley Cooper
The Pitch Once the hottest thing in Hollywood, actress Madeline ''Maddie'' Hayes (McAdams) is desperate for a comeback hit, but instead finds herself working with washed-up PI David Addison (Cooper) at Blue Moon Investigations, the detective agency she'd invested in as a fluke back when she was on the A list. To her shock, she has great chemistry with David, and then it hits her: What if she adapted her experiences at Blue Moon into a feature film? She persuades director Steven Soderbergh to make the movie, but, to her horror, David becomes a huge star, while she's stuck acting in the TV adaptation of the feature film.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
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Max Headroom
Original star Matt Frewer
New star Justin Timberlake
The Pitch In a head-squeezing sci-fi thriller (in 3-D!), investigative blogger Edison Carter (Timberlake) obtains a prototype device created by a multinational company that's designed to upload a person's consciousness onto the Web. When he accidentally activates it while speeding away from the company warehouse on his motorcycle, it creates a skewed cyber version of Edison named Max Headroom (Timberlake). Together, the two work to bring down the corporation as the device goes public and the real and virtual worlds begin to bleed together.
Directed by Michel Gondry
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My Two Dads
Original stars Paul Reiser, Greg Evigan, Staci Keanan
New stars Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chloe Moretz
The Pitch Through a high-concept mix-up at a sperm bank, two male best friends — one straight (Damon), one gay (Affleck) — could both be the father of a foulmouthed 12-year-old girl (Moretz) whose mother passed away and who has no other family. After a family-court judge (Drew Barrymore) awards both men custody, can this unlikely trio form a family?
Directed by Kevin Smith
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ALF
Original stars Max Wright, Paul Fusco (as the voice of ALF)
New stars John Krasinski, Craig Robinson (as the voice of ALF)
The Pitch Will Tanner (Krasinski) has dreamed about becoming an astronaut his entire life, but the best he's done so far is work as an assistant manager at a cut-rate space camp in Tampa with his buddies (Rob Riggle, Jorge Garcia, and Emma Stone). Then ALF arrives, or, rather, a wisecracking ''Alien Life Form'' named Gordon Shumway (Robinson) crash-lands in the pool in the middle of Will's apartment complex. Will and his friends must race to get ALF back in space and hide him from those know-it-all A-holes at NASA, led by Will's old college roommate (Joel McHale).
Directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz)
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Cagney and Lacey
Original stars Sharon Gless, Tyne Daly
New stars Jane Lynch, Wanda Sykes
The Pitch Cagney (Lynch) and Lacey (Sykes) are two ass-kicking, name-taking, quip-snapping NYC lady detectives who like other ladies — just not each other. After their respective cases happen to overlap, however, their new, brash captain (Neil Patrick Harris) forces the two women to work together, and a brilliant (if still entirely professional) partnership is born.
Directed by Ryan Murphy
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The Fall Guy
Original stars Lee Majors, Douglas Barr, Heather Thomas
New stars Will Smith, Chris Pine, Jessica Biel
The Pitch A-list stunt man Colt Seavers (Smith) — ''Yes,'' he tells everyone, ''my parents really did name me Colt'' — runs an international bounty hunting business on the side with his young stunt woman protégée, Jody Banks (Biel). But then Colt suffers a possibly career-ending injury doing a spectacular stunt involving a real Huey helicopter and the Eiffel Tower, and just when the trail of his latest bounty (Christoph Waltz) runs cold in Zurich. As if things couldn't get any worse, the only man who apparently can help Colt and Jody capture the bad guy is the same tech whiz (Pine) whose innovative visual effects software could very well put all stunt people out of a job forever.
Directed by Peter Berg (Hancock, Friday Night Lights)
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Fraggle Rock
New stars Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Jack McBrayer, Jane Krakowski, Tracy Morgan
The Pitch For as long as any of them can remember, the Fraggles — including Red (Fey), Gobo (Baldwin), Wembly (McBrayer), Mokey (Krakowski), and Boober (Morgan) — have led a carefree, subterranean life. But then the postcards that Gobo's uncle Matt (Judah Friedlander) has been sending from ''Outer Space'' (i.e., our world) suddenly stop coming, and the Fraggles have to muster the courage to venture beyond the borders of their happy home to find him.
Directed by Andrew Adamson (Shrek, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Warddrobe)
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Hart to Hart?
Original stars Robert Wagner, Stefanie Powers
New stars Ryan Reynolds, Téa Leoni
The Pitch The dashing CEO of Hart Industries (Reynolds) and his internationally renown freelance-photographer wife (Leoni) solve high-profile unsolved cases with quirky precision and panache, assisted by their loyal butler Max (Seymour Cassel). When her father (Bill Murray) and his mother (Anjelica Huston) are both kidnapped, the Harts think they know exactly who's behind it — arch-nemesis wunderkind Stanley Friesen (Jason Schwartzman) — only to discover his parents are missing too.
Directed by Wes Anderson
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The Facts of Life
Original stars Lisa Whelchel, Kim Fields, Mindy Cohn, Nancy McKeon, Charlotte Rae
New stars Miranda Cosgrove, Raven-Symoné, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, Lisa Kudrow
The Pitch A group of mismatched, misfit girls — spoiled Blair (Cosgrove), busybody Tootie (Raven-Symoné), insecure Natalie (Gomez), and streetwise Jo (Swift) — discover how to live and learn together at their private boarding school thanks to the watchful eye of den mother Mrs. Garrett (Kudrow). But can the girls rally together after Jo gets discovered by a shady record producer (Chris Kattan) who whisks her away to Tokyo?
Directed by Ken Kwapis (He's Just Not That Into You, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants)
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Magnum, P.I.
Original stars Tom Selleck, Roger E. Mosley, Larry Manetti, John Hillerman
New stars Josh Holloway, Terry Crews, Steve Zahn, Alan Rickman
The Pitch Actually, a feature adaptation is already in development by producer Brian Grazer, but here's our scenario anyway: Hawaii private investigator Tom Magnum (Holloway) calls on his Gulf War buddies T.C. (Crews) and Larry (Zahn) to help him rescue his wife (Carla Gugino) — who he thought had died at his side in Baghdad. Overseeing it all is Higgins (Rickman), the officious gentleman (and ex-British Army officer) who runs the wealthy estate that bankrolls Magnum's operation.
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) is attached to write and direct the project.