There's hardly an old TV series that hasn't been turned into a movie. Knight Rider's rights have been signed away. Miami Vice is almost here. Now Kung Fu is to be turned into a movie.

I kind of liked Kung Fu in theory. It started out well enough, but each episode moved so slowly. Plus they spent the first two seasons doing judo instead of kung fu, except for the pilot episode, which was slightly disappointing to say the least – talk about false advertising. Hence, my resistance to buying any of the DVDs.

Then, of course, there was Kung Fu - The Legend Continues, which made Ultimate Force look like a credible action show. “Look there's David Carradine! Blimey, the budget is so low they can't even afford the edit room time to do slow-mo. So David Carradine is just going to do everything in slow mo anyway, even if everyone else is going to go at normal speed.” Who says drugs have no effects on reaction speed?

Anyway, I'm curious to see what they do with this. Amp up the fight scenes, amp up the Eastern philosophy or both? And who will play Kwai Chang? Can they find another completely Caucasian man willing to fake a half-Chinese heritage, or will they actually do what they should have done in the first place and hire someone Asian?

Updates and related entries

November 2, 2006: The Hughes brothers have won the director's role on Kung Fu.