Pitch your dark, gritty reboot

This is only like 1/10 of what we came up with.

Leverage - but our lovable grifters don't right wrongs, they just rip off new people every week

How Everything Became a Gritty Reboot

And while we seem to be getting more gritty reboots than usual in the last decade or so — a decade that saw two films set in what might best be described as the Dark Snow Whiteverse — it’s not a new development.

A profoundly cursed sentence

Except Snow White was already pretty dark to begin with

she was pretty white iirc?

It all seems very fanfic-inspired to me. a kid's romanticized idea of what adult darkness is, superimposed on these "characters" who aren't characters.

yeah the snow white example is somewhat misguided considering that brothers grimm toned down the sexual content in the original fairy tales and amped up violence in some cases.

I will say that The Maltese Falcon (1941) is a gritty remake of Satan Met a Lady (1936). But yeah, the media is going to this well too often.

Gadget

a disgraced former police officer is given another chance after he gets his family murdered in a raid gone wrong. He is gravely wounded, and retrofitted into a cyborg. only Penny and Brain can assuage his deeply seated rage and desire for vengeance.

C.L.A.W. is a conglomerate ran by Jeff Bezos.

Which one of them has a junk habit, though

hallucinating a talking dog at all?

V, except the lizard-alien utopia is visited by other lizard aliens who are revealed to be human under their lizard-skin, bringing all manner of human racism. Also, everyone is on horse.

Survivor, except the producers use sleep deprivation, sound waves, CGI, practical effects, and actors to convince contestants they are on a supernatural island, like in Lost.

Oh, and hypnotism to convince everyone they crash-landed.

Cheers, except it's a seven season descent into alcoholism.

That Thing You Do!, except the band *doesn't* break up, but their third record undersells massively because of the advent of psychedelic rock.

As a result of a chance encounter with a member of The Grateful Dead at the Laurel Canyon store, singer James Maddingly Jr leads the band into a harrowing and torturous psychological downward spiral of beards, nirtous oxide, Manson, sitars, tie-dye, support slots with Vanilla Fudge and Allen Ginsberg.

24, except it's 24 hours in the life of a family and Dad just got laid off by Walmart and Mom has chronic illness. Will Dad start sex work to pay the rent that is due by midnight? Find out next week!

The Handmaid’s Tale except they are all literally handmaids who while away the hours doing embroidery and playing whist.

MST3K except, instead being subjected to terrible movies, the captives are forced to watch and comment on snuff films.

Dukes of Hazzard but with (more) racism, Q-Anon, and opioids. Will Cooter kill Uncle Jesse for his bathtub crank before Sheriff Coltrane seizes the farm in civil forfeiture?

The Cosby Show but it's a reality show.

The Pac-man: a mysterious drifter, haunted by his memories, prowls the city’s labyrinthine alleyways for pills. Stalked by the ghosts of his past, he finds he can only confront his demons when under the influence of a dangerous new street drug found only in the distant corners of the metropolis. Will his ghosts consume him, or will he survive long enough for the big score that will allow him to turn the tables on them?

M*A*S*H*: Set in a remote corner of the Korean War, the show centers on a mobile medical unit dealing with the tragedies of trauma of the war, complicated by a *serial killer* who keeps knocking off the doctors one by one. It's too dangerous to be rescued, so the the MASH unit must hold tight, hunker down and catch the killer before he - or she! - kills *them*. Stunt casting and twist: Alan Alda plays a famous visiting author doing research who fancies himself a detective and gets the investigation rolling, but he is found murdered at the end of the first episode! Thinking "The Thing" meets "Knives Out" meets "Dexter" (or anything else with a serial killer, I've never seen "Dexter").

Dexter’s Lab, starring Michael C. Hall

The Jetsons but in the singularity

blue planet - except it's a reality fishing show where fisherman, lead by the renown hunter, David attenborough, track and destroy endangered species

I really went all in on Leave it to Beaver upthread ... whoa

Ru Paul's drag race - cross dressers compete to build Mad Max style speedsters and race against each other, cross country

There was talk several years ago of a remake of The Thin Man, to feature Johnny Depp. (Fortunately, this seems to be dead.) The assumption was that this version would be truer to the novel than the 1934 version. And fidelity to Hammett's original could legitimately incorporate racism, sexism, homophobia, violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, and codependent relationships, among other "gritty" elements.

That said, I hope this pitch does NOT get resurrected.

I really went all in on Leave it to Beaver upthread ... whoa

― sarahell, Monday, March 15, 2021 3:12 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

except you kind of left us hanging re: june's past

Flog it - a group of charming con men visit towns, enticing pensioners to town halls with their family keepsakes, doors are locked and everyone is pistol whipped until they accept low ball offers for their heirlooms.

One Man And His Dog, where the herded sheep are slaughtered in unflinching detail and an AI recreation of Phil Drabble's head floats above the scene giving an amused commentary on the creatures' last moments.

xp - June was a medical assistant who dealt with pregnancies among the female inmate population at the camp! If a guard raped a prisoner and the prisoner got pregnant -- June dealt with it. Sometimes her work carried over to female staff who weren't inmates. If a senior Nazi official knocked up a clerk or secretary or scientist working on the rockets ... they called June.

I think Ward was just an accountant or financial analyst who got Paperclipped because he knew who was who and who got paid. June was actually the action-oriented one.

The Dick Van Dyke Show - the walnut episode was not a dream and the rest of the series involves Rob's ultimately futile attempt to restore humanity

"Highway to Heaven," where one of Satan's minions, in order to gain favor with his boss, travels through time and space to undo all the good deeds done by an Angel. Kind of like a reverse "Quantum Leap." Obviously it would be called "Highway to Hell."

this was kinda a major plot element of Supernatural tbh

Given the number of popular teensploitation shows out there right now, how about a prequel to Blossom that details her recovering addict brother Tony's four years of teenaged debauchery?

Looks like no one called dibs on Willy Wonka.

As every other property has been grittily rebooted...Hello Larry, in which Larry is a pill-popping right-wing shock jock, who may or may not believe the MAGA/QAnon talking points he regularly spouts.

Family Guy, only it's just home videos of people laughing at the jokes, and then it zooms out to people making fun of the people laughing at the jokes, and the people being laughed at are made aware live on camera that they're being laughed at, and told the people laughing at them are in the other room. and fights break out.

The Jeffersons, only it's Them

(with a laugh track)

Did u mean Us or are we talking George and Louise fighting off giant ants here, because I'm in either way

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Them_(2021_TV_series)

https://www.slashfilm.com/netflix-picks-up-will-smith-movie-from-john-wick-and-atomic-blonde-director/

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air - someone murders Uncle Phil, his nephew has to travel across the country from Philly to avenge him

Dark Prince of Bel Air

The first teaser for the dramatic reimagining of ‘BEL-AIR’ has been released.

The series releases on Peacock in 2022. pic.twitter.com/YhWtLIq33P

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) November 23, 2021

If the entire series takes place underwater, I give the concept two enthusiastic thumbs up

I love the suggestion I saw someone make that the proper sequel would have starred Will Smith's spoiled California kids who are forced to go back to West Philly.