Following his directing gig on last week’s episode of The Flash, filmmaker Kevin Smith has revealed that he will be taking the plunge into television full time by announcing he’s developing a television version of the cult classic film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Smith revealed on his Hollywood Babble-On podcast (via EW) that following his episode of The CW series, he’s set up three different projects, one of them being an adaptation of the MGM film.
“(It’s) one of my favorite movies in the world and largely responsible for the weird s‑‑‑ that I make, because that movie was supposed to be one thing but it did it in another way. It just did it very off-center.”
The original film was released in 1984 and featured an all-star ensemble cast, including John Lithgow, Clancy Brown, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, and of course Peter Weller as the title character, who is described by one of the characters in the film as thinking “he’s Einstein, James Bond and Batman all rolled into one!” A box office bomb at the time of its release, the film has gone on to become a cult favorite with several spin-offs comics and sequel talk coming out over the years.
In describing the potential series, Smith said: “Basically, you just do the entire movie for season one, and then season two you finally do the sequel we’ve all dreamed about,: Buckaroo Banzai Versus the World Crime League.”
Smith confirmed that he’s closed his deal to develop the series and that they’ll be taking the project to networks within the next month to find a home for it. He also revealed that he’d reach out to the film’s original writer Earl Mac Rauch to help with the series and that he’d like to cast Weller as the unseen villain Hanoi Xan, who he describes as “The Joker” to Buckaroo Banzai’s Batman.
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