In the wake of the disappointment of the Dwayne Johnson-led “Baywatch” film, any talk of a potential modern series reboot of the lifeguard franchise has been dropped it seems.
The recent film also starred Zac Efron and Alexandra Daddario took only the basic setup of the original series and attempted to create an oddly expensive $65 million action-comedy out of it. Reviews were mixed, and the film pulled in just $177 million worldwide – not a financial failure but certainly not enough of a success to justify any more.
Series original star Pamela Anderson openly stated she wasn’t a fan of the film and recently her old co-star David Chokachi appeared on an episode of the podcast The Production Meeting and says a pitch for a modern reboot at CBS was out there. However the film’s soft box-office and reception made the network rethink those plans:
“I had pitched them, they rebooted every show from the ’90s and I’d say half of them were hits. I was like, ‘Why are you guys lagging on this, why didn’t you try and strike?… Then the movie came out and the movie squashed any idea. CBS was going to do the show, I had a meeting with them, a location scout. Then the movie came out and instead CBS went with [Magnum PI] that year.”
The original series ran for eleven years between 1989 and 2001. Cancelled after one season on NBC, it was resurrected in syndication and later became the most-watched television show in the world with an estimated weekly audience of 1.1 billion viewers. It’s mostly remembered for the middle few seasons of its run when the cast included actors like Anderson, Chokachi, Alexandra Paul, David Charvet and Yasmine Bleeth along with the perennial David Hasselhoff.read more
“Baywatch” Film Failure Stopped A TV Reboot?
