Just when you thought every popular television series from the ’80s and ’90s had already been picked up for the big screen, along comes news that Cops is being turned into a movie, too.
Yes, the long-running reality show that follows police officers in various cities as they apprehend criminals is the latest small-screen project targeted for adaptation, and unlike many projects at this early stage of development, the Cops movie already has a director and screenwriter attached.
According to Deadline, the movie based on the Cops television series is envisioned as an “edgy narrative feature with a buddy-comedy bent on the order of a Lethal Weapon.”
Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer is reportedly attached to the Cops movie, with Brother Nature writer Cameron Fay penning the script for the film. The film will be Fleischer’s first movie project since 2013’s Gangster Squad, with the filmmaker serving as an executive producer and director on the television series Superstore in recent years. The upcoming comedy Brother Nature will be Fay’s first big-screen project, so he’s a bit of an unknown commodity at this point.
Currently in the midst of its 29th season, Cops now airs on Spike TV after leaving Fox, its home for the show’s first 25 seasons. Shot in the cinéma vérité style with cameras that follow around police officers and rely on the officers’ commentary for context, Cops has chronicled the activities of law enforcement personnel in 140 different cities to date, including sites in the United States, Hong Kong, London, and the former Soviet Union.
At this point, there’s no timetable for development on the Cops movie, as there’s no studio attached to the film yet. However, the attachment of a director and writer at this early stage will likely help move things along.
