Starsky & Hutch a reboot of the 1970s buddy cop series that comes from The Guardians Of the Galaxy franchise writer-director James Gunn, writing duo Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn and Sony Pictures TY Studios, has landed at Amazon for development with a script-to-series commitment.

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A co-production between Amazon and Sony TV, the revamp will be a continuation of the original series, a character-driven one hour procedural that deconstructs the buddy cop genre in the same way that James Gunn has done with the science fiction genre with Guardians of the Galaxy.

AP

Gunn’s brother Brian and cousin Mark are writing based on an idea that James Gunn developed in between writing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and starting pre-production on the film.

“When I was a kid, Starsky & Hutch was the first ‘adult’ show I ever saw, and I fell in love,” said James Gunn. “It instilled in me a lifelong love of gritty street shows, of killer 70’s threads, and muscle cars. So when Neal Mortiz asked me if I wanted to be a part of an all new Starsky & Hutch on TV, I was instantly intrigued. I teamed up with the two writers I trusted most in the world to work with us, my brother Brian Gunn and my cousin Mark Gunn and together we came up with a show that I’m really proud of. At Amazon I believed we would have the most freedom to create something that is different, challenges the audience, and that strays outside the parameters of genre from time to time.”

This is the first foray into television for James Gunn and his production company Troll Court Entertainment. He is executive producing with Brian Gunn, Mark Gunn and Original Film’s Neal Moritz and Pavun Shetty.

“Chekhov said if you have a gun in the room, it’s going to go off. We can’t wait to see what three Gunns do with Starsky & Hutch,” said Joe Lewis, Head of Comedy, Drama and VR, Amazon Studios.

The Gunn cousins are no stranger to working together. James and Brian collaborated on the popular web parody series, PG Porn, which has garnered over 100 million hits, their brother Sean Gunn stars as Kraglin in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and has been in almost all of James’ films, and Brian and Mark work as a writing pair, having written Journey to the Center of the Earth 2.

Created by William Blinn and produced by Spelling-Goldberg Productions, the original series, which aired on ABC from 1975 to 1979, centered on two detectives, the streetwise David Michael Starsky (played by Paul Michael Glaser) and the by-the-book Kenneth Richard “Hutch” Hutchinson (David Soul), traversing the streets of the fictional Bay City, California in a two-door Ford Gran Torino.

“We are thrilled to be working with Amazon on this unique approach to a character driven procedural,” said Jason Clodfelter, Co-President, Sony Pictures Television Studios. “The Gunns completely surpassed our expectations while paying respect to the original.”

Sony TV has the Starsky & Hutch television rights to the 1970s series via its ownership of the Spelling-Goldberg catalogue, which also includes the 1970s series S.W.A.T, a title the studio is rebooting for CBS.

The film rights to Starsky & Hutch belong to Warner Bros., which produced the 2004 feature remake directed by Todd Phillips and starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.

James Gunn, whose credits included mostly cult indie films prior to writing and directing Guardians of the Galaxy, guided the Marvel franchise to a worldwide boxoffice haul of over $1.6 billion.