Despite protests from the families of John Hughes and John Candy that have been lodged ever since the project was first announced, ABC is still pursuing a television adaptation of 1989’s Uncle Buck. But now Entertainment Weekly reports that the network is pursuing a strategy that has proven repeatedly to spark no such protests: remaking it with an all-black cast.
In the original, Candy played the titular uncle who makes his living at the racetrack, and his pancakes with a snow shovel. A family emergency leaves Buck in charge of his nieces and nephew (a pre-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin), who eventually come around to appreciating their uncle’s charms. CBS already tried remaking the film as a sitcom in 1990 with comedian Kevin Meaney, which likely plays into the families of Hughes and Candy balking at another reboot.
There haven’t been any casting announcements for ABC’s version yet. And it’s worth noting that Uncle Buck could still wind up spending a pilot carting the kids around, before driving away in a plume of exhaust, without a series pickup.