EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has put into development a new installment of The Fugitive, one of those rare times that Hollywood took a well-executed TV series and turned it into an even more exhilarating feature film. The studio has set Christina Hodson whose The Eden Project was bought at auction by Sony, and whose script Shut In is completing shooting with Naomi Watts for EuropaCorp to write it. Arnold and Anne Kopelson are returning as producers, but they would not say if Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones will be coming back for an encore. Jones won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the 1993 film, and Ford has signed on to reprise in new installments of both Star Wars and Blade Runner.
Worldwide production president Greg Silverman is backing this one, and the hope is to be in production by early 2016. The series starred David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, a surgeon accused of murdering his wife. He goes on the run to clear his name, leaving clues for a Les Miserables-like dogged cop about a one-armed man Kimble said he struggled with during his wifes killing. The four-season series run on ABC culminated in a finale that was viewed by nearly half the population with TV sets at the time. That was a hard act to follow, but the Andrew Davis-directed movie was a huge global hit for Warner Bros, one of its biggest of the 1990s with a $369 million worldwide gross, with memorable large-scale action scenes on a $40 million budget. It was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture. Jones stayed on for a sequel, U.S. Marshals, which featured a manhunt involving Wesley Snipes and Robert Downey Jr.
Kopelson said this would be his 30th film and a return to Warner Bros, where he had his greatest run of success while a tenured producer on the lot. The Kopelsons have been busy turning another of his Warner Bros hits, Devils Advocate, into a TV series, partnered with John Wells Productions and Warner Horizon. Courtenay Valenti will shepherd The Fugitive with Jon Berg and Chantal Nong.
