WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Roland Emmerich Is Ready To Shop Lawrence In Arabia.
The filmmaker has long dreamed of playing in the world of the classic 1962 film starring Peter O’Toole, and in the coming weeks, he and Bohemian Rhapsody writer Anthony McCarten will take it out to potential partners. The duo envision this as a three-season prestige series, and McCarten hopes to write the entire first season.
Emmerich calls it “In Arabia,” rather than “of Arabia,” because as he says, “it has a little bit more characters” than the original movie.
In 1983, executives at NBC thought, “Yes! Let’s turn the beloved 1943 movie Casablanca into a TV series. And let’s get David Soul out of Starsky and Hutch to play Rick, the iconic character played by the legendary Humphrey Bogart. It’ll be brilliant!”
It wasn’t. And Roland Emmerich’s TV series version of one of the greatest films ever made will likely be worse.