Actor currently starring in musical comedy Begin Again welcomes suggestions on Twitter that he'd be a good fit to star in movie version of the much-loved detective TV show

It is not quite yet the story of how a major Hollywood movie was born on Twitter. But thanks to a flurry of tweets this week, the world now knows that Mark Ruffalo is keen on playing Columbo in a big-screen revival for the famously taciturn detective. And Twitter itself is even more determined to see it happen.



This exercise in the power of social media began when Gary Whitta, the English screenwriter of The Book of Eli and After Earth, tweeted his confusion that a Ruffalo-starring Columbo film was not already in production. "How is this not a thing?" he asked of The Avengers actor, who bears some resemblance to the star of the long-running TV series, Peter Falk, and also portrayed a downbeat cop in the David Fincher thriller Zodiac.

After various Hollywood industry types responded positively to Whitta's comments on Twitter, Ruffalo himself surprisingly popped up to confirm he was interested. The prolific tweeter wrote: "@garywhitta LOL. I have been working on it!" The pair then began a conversation on the whys and wherefores of bringing a Ruffalo-led Columbo movie to cinemas, though it quickly became apparent that studio Universal is currently eyeing a TV reboot.

Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) @garywhitta That's an idea. Ed Solomon pitched the movie idea to me about a month ago. Does universal have an appetite for it is the ?.

It remains to be seen whether the film comes to fruition, but that did not stop thousands of Twitter users posting their own fake posters for the proposed movie while attempting to get the hashtag #ruffalocolumbo to trend on the social media network.





Falk, who died in 2011 at the age of 83, won four Emmys for his starring role in Columbo, which ran from 1971 until 2003. His glass eye became the character's trademark, despite the actor having been told he would never work in film or TV by a New York agent prior to embarking on his hugely successful Hollywood career.





• Video: Mark Ruffalo on Begin Again

