‘Lethal Weapon,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘MacGyver’: Why fall TV is all about reboots

Do not adjust your set: What’s on television may look more familiar than usual this fall.

The roster of recognizable names for the 2016-17 season goes beyond longtime TV fixtures Matt LeBlanc and Kiefer Sutherland and includes roughly a dozen shows based on already existing series and films, some of which stretch back decades.

“Lethal Weapon,” “The Exorcist” and “Frequency” are just three of the shows coming to screens this fall that first appeared in theaters. One new series, CBS’ rebooted “MacGyver,” debuted on a different network more than 20 years ago.

Some of the reasoning is simple: In a TV landscape that’s more expansive and competitive than ever, it’s perceived as a far safer bet for networks to dip into the past and ask audiences to get reacquainted with stories they recognize than start from scratch with a new one.

“Our hope is the well-known titles -- if, and only if, well-executed -- will lighten the load on our marketing team,” Fox Television Group Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Dana Walden said at the Television Critics Assn. press tour. Fox has “Lethal Weapon” and “The Exorcist” on the fall schedule and new takes on “24” and “Prison Break” coming mid-season. But, Walden added, the network recognizes that a familiar name is not enough and was unconvinced by the prospects of a new “Lethal Weapon” as the show first entered production.

“At every stage, we kept lifting the bar,” Walden said after her panel concluded last week. “Because again we are aware of the skepticism. It’s an iconic franchise, it’s a film franchise, it’s evocative of a specific cast. At each stage, they kept upping the bar; they delivered great material.”

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Networks have been drawing from multiplexes for decades. “M*A*S*H,” “Alice” and “In the Heat of the Night” ran on TV for years after being inspired by the big screen. But for every success story like recent award winner “Fargo,” there’s a wasteland of single-season failures that includes long-forgotten attempts to revive “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Working Girl” (starring Sandra Bullock) and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

The trend has expanded in recent years with the rise of streaming services. For all its success with originals, including “Stranger Things,” “Orange Is the New Black” and “House of Cards,” Netflix has an open-door policy to rebooting or launching continuations of long-gone TV series, including “Fuller House,” “Voltron” and “Gilmore Girls.” HBO is also getting into the re-imagination business this fall with its update of the 1973 film “Westworld.”

Results have been typically uneven, but in some cases, these reboots can strike a chord among critics and audiences. The 1990 TV version of “Parenthood,” the 1989 film by Ron Howard, was cancelled quickly. But a subsequent adaptation in 2010 lasted five years. In the late ’90s, Joss Whedon’s critically beloved “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” built a world over seven seasons that expanded into directions and spinoffs that reached well beyond the original 1992 film. The mid-’00s small-town high-school football drama “Friday Night Lights,” adapted from the 1990 book and 2004 film of the same name, may be the contemporary gold standard for film-to-television translations.

“ ‘Friday Night Lights’ was one of my favorite shows of all time,” said Jeremy Carver, who departed his post as show runner for CW’s long-running series “Supernatural” to adapt the 2000 film “Frequency” for the network.

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After his panel at the TCA press tour, Carver also listed “Parenthood” as one of his favorite silver-screen to small screen adaptations. (Perhaps not coincidentally, the two shows shared an executive producer in Jason Katims.) He believes the secret to a reboot’s success lies in the characters. “There was a real soulfulness . . . They found the opportunity to deepen those characters and those relationships, and I thought [both shows] did it magnificently.”

For its part, “Frequency” may not be receiving the same buzz as its television counterparts partly because the 2000 film, led by Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel, was a more modest hit.

Cast member Lenny Jacobson believes that could work to the show’s advantage. “In this day and age where people are doing reboots, sometimes it’s safer not to reboot something that is untouchable, as you can see with, like, ‘Ghostbusters’,” he said at the press tour panel for “Frequency.” “Thank God, if it wasn’t super-popular, we’re not going to ruin anyone’s childhood by doing this movie into a TV show.”

That pressure was also on the minds of the creators of the new series based on “The Exorcist,” the 1973 horror classic that spawned multiple sequels that struggled to reach the same heights because, in the mind of series creator Jeremy Slater, they adhered too closely to the original. “The only way you can succeed is by doing something new,” he said during the press tour, adding that even the use of the original film’s theme music in the series pilot was done with some reluctance.

“Exorcist” star Geena Davis said she would not have agreed to join the cast if her character had been intended to echo the role played by Ellen Burstyn in the original. “Before they explained what it was about, at first, I went [gasp] ‘The Exorcist’,” she said. “I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to do that.”

For Peter Lenkov, who rebooted “Hawaii Five-0” for CBS as well the upcoming “MacGyver,” satisfying the rules of the previous series while staking new ground was a balancing act.

The new MacGyver, played by Lucas Till, is described as less of a lone wolf than Richard Dean Anderson’s original character, and modern technology plays more of a role than it did in the lo-fi ’80s series.

That said, the new iteration deviates from a running joke of not revealing MacGyver’s first name, which the original series upheld nearly to its conclusion. “If you’re going to do a reboot of something or re-imagination of something, you can’t hide the ball on things like that,” he said at the press tour. “Everybody knows his first name.” (It’s Angus.)

The creators of “Lethal Weapon” also felt a need to fiddle with the backstories created for buddy cops Riggs and Murtaugh, played by Clayne Crawford and Damon Wayans, slipping into the shoes of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, respectively. “I’m a fan of all four of the films, but the first one is the one that resonated the most for me,” said executive producer Matt Miller, adding that he adapted the series with a darker, more character-driven arc in mind, rather than trying to replicate the screwball buddy-comedy franchise the films became. “In order to do something that had legs . . . you had to have some depth that the characters were drawing on.”

For the creators, however, the show will still rise or fall on the strength of those characters. “We’re dealing with that gigantic shadow of Mel Gibson, and obviously Danny Glover, a tremendous performance,” said McG, who directed the “Lethal Weapon” pilot. “You start talking to Damon, you start talking to Clayne, and you can assess what their strengths are, and you want to play into them.”

For all the efforts to walk the line between offering something familiar yet original enough to attract an audience week after week, there is hardly a guarantee of success. CBS, which reboots the 2001 film “Training Day” in mid-season, has an uneven track record for film-to-TV adaptations of late. Highly touted reboots of “Limitless” and “Rush Hour” were both launched by the network last year, but both were canceled after struggling to find an audience. Still, the network remains optimistic.

“We buy [intellectual properties] every year. I think they have just as good a shot of getting on [TV] as a show that doesn’t have a title that was well-known,” said CBS Entertainment President Glenn Geller after his executive session at the press tour.

“I don’t think you can judge a show just because of its title.”

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