If a character has been around so long that everyone has forgotten about him, can he become original again? That might be the gambit that Columbia Pictures is going for, picking up a spec by Barry Sonnenfeld and BenDavid Grabinski that re-imagines boy genius Tom Swift.

Tom Who? Yeah, exactly-- the character was the star of a series of paperbacks that kicked off nearly a century ago, and while he has reappeared in various book incarnations over the decades, his popularity hasn't been as lasting as that of his contemporaries like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Then again, the one guarantee toward everlasting fame-- the movie deal-- has never happened for ol' Tom, until now. Variety writes that, if Columbia's planned pic gets made, it will have bested a 1968 version that Gene Kelly intended to direct, as well as a failed 70s effort.

Barry Sonnenfeld > Gene Kelly? Only in this strange world, apparently. Swift, who was apparently the original Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius, inventing things like photo telephones and houses on wheels, actually sounds like a pretty appealing character. And hey, at least now they're cannibalizing someone else's childhood for movie ideas, rather than constantly taking things from the 80s. It's sad that that's the silver lining here, but there ya go.