Jeremy here...
I have a deeply nostalgic love for John Badham's BLUE THUNDER. I was nine years old when it was released to theaters in May of 1983, and it starred the great Roy Scheider as the pilot of the world's most technologically advanced helicopter; getting my parents to look past the R-rating (boobies in the opening ten minutes!) took some doing, but, ultimately, I won them over. Written by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby, the film was an early cautionary tale about the militarization of the nation's police, but it worked best as a slam-bang action film in its final third - especially with some truly inventive visual f/x from Hoyt Yeatman of DreamQuest Images, tremendous aerial stunts and dynamic, Academy Award-nominated editing from Edward M. Abroms and Frank Morriss. Despite the slow first hour, I dug it, and devoured the short-lived spinoff TV show a year later (in case you're wondering, yes, I think Blue Thunder would blast Airwolf out of the fucking sky).
So I have no issue with Sony greenlighting a BLUE THUNDER remake from Trigger Street's Dana Brunetti and Carter Swan, who will team with Sony's President of Production, Michael De Luca. This time out, Blue Thunder will be an armed-to-the-teeth drone patroling, I presume, an American metropolis. Craig Kyle, a veteran of the Mavel Studios trenches (he wrote THOR: RAGNAROK and many of the company's animated shows), is set to write the script. Though I'll miss the sleazy Los Angeles of Badham's movie, I have faith in this very smart creative team to find a director who can combine practical action with top-flight visual f/x. And if they could name the two of the main characters Roy and Warren, well, that'd be cool, too.
Catch ya later!
