The television industry didn’t even give us a full 24 hours to bask in the news that Cameron Crowe killed off NBC’s planned Say Anything TV show before tossing in yet another classic comedy now on track to get the sitcom treatment. Deadline reports that ABC has teamed up with Ride Along producer Will Packer to adapt John Hughes’s 1989 film Uncle Buck starring John Candy as a half-hour multi-cam comedy. The TV adaptation will be written and co-executive produced by Steven Cragg and Brian Bradley, who have also written for MADtv and Scrubs. This makes the second attempt at a television adaptation for Uncle Buck following the 1990 version starring Kevin Meaney; it was canceled by the end of the season.
UPDATE: It looks like the Uncle Buck show might get Cameron Crowed. Deadline reports that the families of original Uncle Buck director and star John Hughes and John Candy have “voiced their disapproval†for the series. In a statement released today, Hughes and Candy’s families cited Hughes’s opposition toward the movie’s first TV remake on CBS – not to mention a lack of knowledge about the series before news broke this past Tuesday – as reasons why they don’t want an Uncle Buck show to get made. Read their full statement below:
Disappointment has been expressed by both the John Hughes and John Candy families over the conduct and decision by the ABC Network and Universal Television to develop a comedy series based on the feature film Uncle Buck. Rather than either entity proving advance information to the Estates, the families learned of the project’s potential via the media. The families feel a strong attachment to the original film which symbolized the great and unique collaboration between Hughes and Candy. Recalling that the director was displeased with first Uncle Buck TV show effort which failed on CBS in 1990, it is well expected that he would not be supportive of this current attempt.