The 'Turner And Hooch' Reboot Your Dog Begged For Is Heading To Disney+ As An Original Series
If the live-action redux of Lady and the Tramp wasn't your cup of tea, maybe you'll be happier with Disney digging into their Touchstone Pictures and Buena Vista Pictures movie library for a different kind of canine collaboration.
The 1989 buddy cop comedy Turner and Hooch starred Tom Hanks as a detective and Beasley the Dog as a French mastiff left in his custody after one of his longtime friends is found dead, resulting in one of the more recognizable crime-solving duos of the '80s. The movie is now slated to become a new original series on Disney+, with Burn Notice creator Matt Mix acting as writer and executive producer.
Deadline has news on the Turner and Hooch reboot coming to Disney+ as an original series. Though the overall story may not be the same, the series is believed to function on the basic premise of following a police detective working with a dog. We're not sure if the dog ends up in the detective's custody due to a case, or if he gets paired with a K-9 unit. But whatever the concept is this time, the series is getting close to landing a greenlight to move forward.
20th Century Fox Television, which is now part of Disney Television Studios, is working on the project. While this might sound a little desperate on the part of Fox and Disney, it should be noted that the original Turner and Hooch movie grossed $71 million on a budget of just $13 million. Plus, the involvement of Matt Nix should add to the criminal intrigue aspect of the series, even if it ends up being a bit more tame than Burn Notice, thanks to its Disney+ home.
At the same time, it's not as if Turner and Hooch is one of those movies that has a big nostalgic fanbase. It may get referenced frequently in pop culture, but that's not indicative of interest in a reboot of the movie as a TV series. In fact, ABC once teamed with Touchstone TV in an attempt to adapt Turner and Hooch into a TV series starring Back to the Future bad guy Thomas F. Wilson as Turner and Beasley the Dog reprising his role from the movie. Though it didn't get a series order, it still aired through the Wonderful World of Disney programming line-up in the summer of 1990.
Disney is certainly taking advantage of their own library and the films and TV shows of 20th Century Fox to help beef up future "original" movies and TV shows for Disney+. But will any of them be worth checking out? Or will they get lost in the shuffle of the rest of the library like a lot of Netflix original movies and TV shows.