Kevin Smith says he’s developing a Buckaroo Banzai TV show
Kevin Smith is a reasonably popular and successful director, with a lot solid movies and also Cop Out under his belt, but it sounds like his recent gig directing an episode of The Flash is making an impact on his career in a way that his movies never have. On a recent episode of his Hollywood Babble-On podcast (via Uproxx), Smith said that he’s “never fucking done anything in [his] life that had more people saying, ‘holy shit, good job’” than that Flash episode, to the point where it has now opened some “weird doors” for him. Apparently, MGM liked Smith’s Flash episode enough to bring him in for a meeting about turning cult classic The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension into a TV show, which happens to be an idea that Smith seems very excited about.
Smith says that his pitch was that the first season of this show would be an adaptation of the original movie (which starred Peter Weller as a neurosurgeon/physicist/rock star/race car driver), with subsequent seasons covering Buckaroo Banzai Against The World Crime League, a nonexistent sequel teased in the original film’s credits. That and whatever other details he threw in for the adaptation were evidently good enough for MGM, because Smith says that he and the studio are going to “take it out and try to find a home for it” next month.
You can listen to Smith’s whole podcast below.