Why Did No One Tell Me About This Get Shorty Adaptation With Chris O’Dowd Before?!

Usually, when it comes to adaptations, I have questions and a few reservations. When it comes to this Get Shorty TV adaptation, however, I am all in. For one, it stars The IT Crowd’s Chris O’Dowd. Also, this trailer looks really good. I’d even go as far as to predict that the show will actually be watchable.

A reimagining of the 1995 film starring John Travolta, Dennis Farina, Gene Hackman and Rene Russo, the show will center on a hitman from Nevada named Miles Daley (played by O’Dowd). Ray Romano is set to play Rick Moreweather, a producer of terrible movies. I’m assuming he’s replacing Hackman’s Harry Zim from the film, as they have similar backgrounds.

Thanks to the success of Fargo, I have complete faith that an adaption like this will work. It has a great cast , follows the film’s promise closely, but sets it in a slightly different universe so it’s not just a rehash of what came before.

“It’s like Fargo and what they did with the television series, which is to take the tone of the original book, but it’s wholly new characters,” Jocelyn Diaz, EVP of Original Programming at EPIX explained according to SlashFilm. “So it’s entirely new. It’s a different character. His name is Miles and it is fantastic. The script is so strong. It’s very much the tone of Elmore Leonard, the world of this hitman who goes to Hollywood. There’s that template but it’s totally different. So it’s inspired by the book but it’s not exactly the book.”

The show premieres on August 13. I don’t know about you, but I am so ready for this.

(via SlashFilm, image: EPIX)

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