Mainstream Hollywood’s adoration for familiarity now stretches beyond just genre properties and into — of all things — cop comedies. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum lead the upcoming 21 Jump Street, a more comedic take on the 1980s series of the same name, and now we’ve received wind of a similar reboot.
Scott Zabielski
will give us a retread of Police Academy for New Line. The original 1984 comedy starred Steve Guttenberg, G.W. Bailey and Kim Catrall and centered on a group of average civilians training to be cops after the department opens its doors in desperation.
This will be Zabielski’s first time at the helm of a
feature, as his only directing work to date is on the comedy series Tosh.0. Interestingly, he actually went through a
police academy and is a certified reserve officer.
Critics weren’t exactly fond of the original feature’s lowbrow humor, but it's worth considering, that Police Academy paved the way for six sequels. Given that the reboot stays true to the nature of the original film, it could be low-budget project that results in a hefty profit for New Line, and a reboot could see similar cinematic longevity with sequels.