And you thought news that Hollywood was making a Good Times movie was the weirdest, most-unexpected TV-to-movie story that you would hear this week.
No, Deadline now reports that after a 10-year legal battle, the rights to the once-successful sitcom Hogan’s Heroes will return to show creators Albert S. Ruddy and the late Bernard Fein, with Ruddy planning to produce a feature film in celebration. Ruddy and the Fein estate have been warring with Bing Crosby Productions, which originally produced Heroes in the late 1960s and is currently owned by Dallas Mavericks owner (and all-around billionaire) Mark Cuban. But an arbitrator finally handed the rights back to Ruddy, clearing way for a possible film.
The original show starred the late Bob Crane as Colonel Robert E. Hogan, leader of a band of misfits in a German POW camp who made life miserable for Colonel Wilhelm Klink (Werner Klemperer). This new Hogan’s Heroes movie will have nothing to do with Auto Focus, Paul Schrader’s sordid biopic casting Greg Kinnear as Crane and focusing on his obsession with recording women during sex. But it is the latest in a long line of producing projects for Ruddy, whose older credits include The Godfather but who also recently produced David Ayer’s Ten with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
With the Good Times adaptation, we speculated that the story can be shifted to modern times to possibly reflect hard times people face now. Hogan’s Heroes only works in a German POW camp, so expect WWII-style laughs when the movie finally reaches theaters.
