It’s a prequel. It’s a reboot. It’s a prequel and a reboot! According to Deadline, Netflix is currently developing a Chinatown prequel television series based on the 1974 Roman Polanski neo-noir, for which the film’s screenwriter Robert Towne took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Towne will reportedly work alongside director David Fincher to write the Netflix show’s pilot.
The series will focus on J.J. “Jake†Gittes, the private investigator played by Jack Nicholson in the film, as a younger man tangling with money, crime, and corruption in Los Angeles, sometime before Chinatown’s 1937 setting. Considering all the murder, malfeasance, and incest Jake must have seen before the events of the movie, it’s honestly pretty shocking he didn’t know it was Chinatown already.