I’m going to come right out and say it, and I don’t care too much who knows:
I don’t think I mind too much that they’re going to make a live-action Hong Kong Phooey movie…except for the part where it’s just “a little bit racist.”
Announced last weekend when I actually had access to the Internet, Variety noted that Alcon Entertainment (Dude, Where’s My Car?, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) will be in charge of the live-action/animated adaptation of the 1974 Hanna Barbera cartoon about a bumbling superhero whose secret identity is that of a janitor at the police station. Oh, and he’s also an anthropomorphic dog.
Alex Zamm (Inspector Gadget 2) is directing from a David A. Goodman (Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost) script, and Alcon studio presidents Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove are two of the producers, with Brett Ratner and Jay Stern (Rush Hour movies) rounding out the set.
I’m also going to come right out and say this: I actually liked Underdog, because it took the idea of an anthropomorphic superhero dog and was able to insert it into the “real world” in a very entertaining way. A large part of that was the performance of lead villain Simon Barsinister, as played by Peter Dinklage (Death at a Funeral) of whom I first took notice in The Station Agent, one of my favorite indie movies of all time—and it doesn’t look like I’m the only one who thinks so.
If Zamm, Goodman, and the rest can successfully navigate this picture past its “This was really cool in the 1970s when everybody was ‘kung fu fighting'” origins, then this might not actually be a completely terrible idea.