Point Break Writer To Adapt American Gladiators
Posted by sean in Latest News, Movies on November 20th, 2009
If you’re like me, you have just one problem with movies today: there’s not enough flimsy franchise properties being exploited as weak film concepts. Fear not, dear readers, for more idiocy doth approach: That’s right, they’re making an American Gladiators movie.
Peter Illiff, best known for the 1991 actioner Point Break, in which Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves fired guns and looked surprised a lot, has been locked in to script the big-screen adaptation of the 1988 physical-challenge game show. Illiff also wrote the scripts for Patriot Games, Varsity Blues, and other projects that you last saw almost a decade ago. He has a number of films lined up for 2010, including a Point Break sequel and Chasing The Dragon, an action-thriller starring Wesley Snipes.
Most recently, Gladiators got a makeover for a 
2008 revival, hosted by Hulk Hogan. Like the 1988 original, it pitted contestants against a number of musclebound, flamboyantly-named “gladiators” in various games of physical prowess and skill. You might have to knock your opponent off a pedestal, beat them in a race, or shoot them with a large NERF-like gun. So, how do you turn that into a movie plot?
Well, apparently you don’t. You just strip away the whole concept of the actual show, seize onto the term “American Gladiators,” and turn the Gladiators into superheroes.
Yeah. Seriously. That’s happening.
