The cinema of the 1980s produced a lot of ambitiously strange genre fiction, but only one movie of that era (or any era) starred a particle physicist who’s also a race car driver, rock star, and neurosurgeon: W.D. Richter’s 1984 B-movie masterwork The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. It’s a beloved-but-obscure cult hit, but it might be getting a high-profile reboot if Kevin Smith has his way. The writer, director, and podcaster told listeners of his Hollywood Babble-On podcast that he and MGM are developing a TV version of the story.
It apparently stemmed from Smith’s recent turn directing an episode of the CW’s The Flash. “Doin’ that has opened up weird doors,” Smith said in the podcast. “MGM said, ‘Hey, we hear that you like Buckaroo Banzai.’ … So they called my agent and they were like, ‘We think we’d like to talk to him about — y’know, we did — with Fargo, we took Fargo and turned it into a TV show and it’s won awards and shit.’ They were like, ‘We have another property that we wanna do that with, and we were wondering if he’s interested and has ever heard of Buckaroo Banzai.’”
He said he was interested, it having been a childhood favorite of his, and now he and MGM are apparently about to “take it out and try to find a home for it.” Smith wants it to include the original cast — which featured Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, and a young Jeff Goldblum — as villains, and wants the first season to reinterpret the plot of the movie before a second season that would go in a new direction. For those who disdain the idea of Smith helming this project, just remember the words of Buckaroo: “Don’t be mean. We don’t have to be mean. ‘Cause remember: No matter where you go, there you are.”
