"One thing about living in 2019 I never could stomach - those damn '80s reboots."
Yes, if you thought something like 'The Lost Boys' was safe from TV executives and their desperate need to harvest your childhood, think again.
Given the success of 'Lethal Weapon', 'Magnum PI' and countless other shows and movies from the '80s, Joel Schumacher's deliriously camp vampire classic 'The Lost Boys' is being turned into a TV show on The CW. While details are slim at the moment, you've got to imagine that there'll be references aplenty to the original and possibly even a cameo from Jason Patric or Kiefer Sutherland.
Hell, you might even see them take on a semi-permanent role in the series as well - as a way of tying the two entities together in one. You can't really blame The CW or TV executives for wanting to take something familiar and regurgitating it for a new generation. It's the same reason why the likes of 'Riverdale' is doing so well.
'Riverdale' is a perfect example of taking something groundbreaking and weird like David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks', sanding down the edges, giving it a glossy coat of paint, and firing it back onto screens. It works because TV audiences have such a glut of content now that you can take all of these things simultaneously. You can go back and watch 'Twin Peaks' whenever you like, thanks to Netflix et al, or you can watch a softer version of it in 'Riverdale'.
Taking 'The Lost Boys' as an example of this idea, the name alone has brand recognition. If teenagers don't remember it, their parents will. After all, 1987 - the year 'The Lost Boys' was released - was 32 years ago and teenagers from that era are now right at the age where they'd have teenagers of their own.
TV studios need a way of breaking through all of the content that's out there, so harvesting what's already existing - instead of creating something new - is an easy way of doing that. Plus, you can't blame them for thinking that 'The Lost Boys' would work with a new generation, much less on somewhere like The CW.
It's perfectly fitted for that kind of trashy and self-aware TV show that 'The Lost Boys' will most likely be, but the question remains - when does it stop? Does it simply move on another generation, where you have movies from the '00s being harvested for TV adaptations? Would something like 'Donnie Darko' or 'The Faculty' work in a TV setting?
Sadly, there's probably a treatment sitting in a desk somewhere where both of these, and maybe something like Rian Johnson's 'Brick', is just waiting to be dusted off when the time is just right.