Is ALF The Next 80s Icon To Get A Hollywood Reboot?

Ok, now they’ve gone too far. It wasn’t enough Hollywood rebooted The Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks, now they’ve got their sights set on ALF! And creator Paul Fusco is all about it. 

For those of you too young to remember, ALF (that’s a simplified way of calling something an Alien Life Form), was a sci-fi sitcom that lasted four seasons on NBC. It starred ALF, a puppet, who hailed from the planet Melmac. He crash lands in the garage of the Tanner family on Earth who decide to take him in and keep his existence a secret from an alien task force. Hilarity ensues. Oh, and he loves to eat cats (a common Melmac food), though he never does during the series.

Fusco has yet to pitch to studios but has been working on the new project for some time. “I think the timing is right. That’s a big important thing, timing,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “There have been movies out there of characters that I didn’t think were on the same parallel as ALF that got movies made, so I think it’s time. I think it could be a home run on a lot of levels.”

Fusco was not only the creator of ALF but his puppeteer and voice on the show.

“ALF could be more outspoken now than ever, because the world is a whole different place than the ’80s. And I think the character still stands up and certainly has more to say now than ever,” he said. “I think we would approach it in a fresh way. I don’t think we would duplicate the TV show, but I think we would maybe put it in a storyline where we would explain how ALF got here and put him with a new family and let the character speak for himself.”

I’m of two minds. In general, I don’t like the idea of reboots but they can be good if done well. Obviously The Muppets was the perfect storm but I enjoyed things like the recent A-Team movie. Then again, I’d burn Hollywood to the ground if they ever tried to redo Back to the Future so I guess it really depends. What do you think?

(via /Film)

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Jill Pantozzi

Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."

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