Justin Timberlake Wants To Revive The Buddy Cop Comedy

It's been a long time since there was a truly successful buddy cop comedy, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood from continually trying to bring back the genre. Even after Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell skewered the legacy of Lethal Weapon in The Other Guys, Wahlberg has gone on to join Jonah Hill in a buddy cop comedy called The Good Time Gang, while Hill himself is putting a spin on the genre with his 21 Jump Street reboot. Oh, and there's still a script for a Lethal Weapon reboot out there, one that would conveniently sidestep the mess that is Mel Gibson by starting all over again with new characters.

And now, into the breach steps Justin Timberlake, the guy who seemingly can't keep sticking his fingers in pretty much everything. In their massive roundup piece about the future of Warner Bros. post-Harry Potter, Vulture mentions that Timberlake is attached to Fully Automatic, a Joel Silver-produced project that, yes, "the studio hopes to use to revive the magic of its once-mighty Lethal Weapon franchise." It probably doesn't mean much good for the actual Lethal Weapon reboot if this project now has a major star attached, but then again that's probably a good thing-- the buddy cop comedy is eternal, but Murtaugh and Riggs deserve to fade into the past with dignity.

As he makes his next bid toward movie stardom next weekend in Friends With Benefits, and enjoys a slightly absurd Guest Actor Emmy nomination for hosting Saturday Night Live, Timberlake is pretty much earning his reputation as the jack-of-all-trades of Hollywood. I kind of don't mind the idea of him in a buddy cop comedy, but I'll admit, I'd probably rather have another album on the level of Futuresexlovesounds. Timberlake seems committed to acting for now, though, and if it's a buddy cop comedy he wants, I suppose he could bring us much worse.