T.J. Hooker is trading the small screen for the silver screen.
Deadline reported on Tuesday, August 5, that Netflix secured the rights for a film version of the beloved cop series. Instead of sticking to its drama roots, the T.J. Hooker reboot will be an action comedy movie.
Rick Husky, who created T.J. Hooker, will executive produce the film. Jarrad Paul and Andy Mogel will write the script. The duo are currently showrunners on the Netflix series Free Bert starring Bert Kreischer, which will premiere later this year. Paul and Mogel previously created the 2015 legal sitcom The Grinder, which starred Rob Lowe and Fred Savage.
Details about the cast have yet to be revealed.
T.J. Hooker was a procedural that starred William Shatner, Adrian Zmed, April Clough, Heather Locklear, Richard Herd, James Darren and Hugh Farrington. Shatner played the titular character, who was a 15-year veteran police sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department.
The show followed T.J. as he returned to the force after his partner was killed in the line of duty. While T.J. personally made it his mission to take down criminals after his former partner was murdered, he was also tasked with training new recruits at the local police academy. T.J. got partnered with multiple rookies and had to learn to adapt with his old-school style in a more modern environment.
The original series aired on ABC from 1982 to 1985 for four seasons. After being canceled at ABC, CBS gave T.J. Hooker a second chance at life for its fifth and final season. The show is available to stream on Tubi.
“Well, before the exigencies of television got a hold of it, it was meant to be about a cop who hadn’t progressed into the modern police age. So, the complex idea for T.J. Hooker was this cop trying to work himself into the modern age,” Shatner said of the series in an April 2024 interview with the Television Academy. “At its best, the show did that. And, at its worst, it was a good cop show.”
News of the T.J. Hooker film comes shortly after the success of The Naked Gun reboot starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. Much like T.J. Hooker, The Naked Gun was a beloved franchise from the ‘80s. The Naked Gun starred Leslie Nielsen, who died in 2018.
In its new iteration, The Naked Gun film was a box office smash, as it earned $17 million domestically during its opening weekend.
Read the full article here
