Sing it with me now!
SOME PEOPLE STAAAAAND IN THE DARKNESS
AFRAID TO STEP INTOOOOOOO THE LIIIIIIIIIIIGHT
SOME PEEEOPLE NEED TO HELLLLP SOMMMEBOOOODY
WHEN EDGE OF SURRENDER’S IN SIIIIIIIGHT
In what’s clearly going to be the be-all-end-all of small to big screen adaptations, the thundering of the masses has finally yielded dividends and Paramount has, at long goddamned last, decided to move forward with the cinematic adaptation of the seminal 90s slow-motion flesh-bouncing series Baywatch.
The original series, which made a household name out of Pamela Anderson and put David Hasselhoff on the fast-track to delicious floor hamburgers, ran for 11 seasons (seriously!) between 1989 and 2001, and centred around a group of Los Angeles County Lifeguards – a beach patrol service whose employment policies tended to favour form over function.
The long rumoured feature length adaptation has had a lot of stops and starts in the years since it left TV screens – at one point back in 2006, Jessica Simpson was all but set to take on the Pamela Anderson role whose character description page surely must have simply read “Blonde. Boobs.” But now all of a sudden this particular train is full of steam and moving ahead at some manner of pace.
Even better still, producers have done the blindingly obvious thing for a change and decided to throw money at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to fill the predominantly shirtless starring role.
In following the new tradition of taking semi-serious light TV drama properties and modernising them with a tongue-in-cheek slant, the new film looks set to be a comedic take on the jiggly show of yore, with We’re the Millers and Horrible Bosses 2 writing pals Sean Anders and John Morris attached to direct, whilst up-and-coming comic scribe Justin Malen has been tapped to provide the rewrite of the much passed around script.
As far as potential story goes, at one point the film was apparently going to revolve around a series of shark attacks that lead the gang to discover and bust up drug-smuggling ring. Whether that remains in the film, or if it’s ditched in favour of having The Rock stand on the shoreline telling a bunch of riptides to know their role and shut their mouths before reviving an unresponsive swimmer with a People’s Elbow, remains unclear.
But hey. Don’t you worry. It’s gonna be alright. The Rock’s always ready. He won’t let you out of his sight.
And now for little-to-no reason, the greatest TV theme song of all time.
Holy crap that little fruity piano line is the absolute best.
Photo: Kevin Winter via Getty Images.
via FilmDrunk.
