Shaft to be rebooted again with director Tim Story

The black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks is coming back to the big screen.

That’s right, another reboot of ‘Shaft’ is in the works at New Line Cinema, and Tim Story has been hired to direct, according to The Wrap. Reportedly this new take on the blaxploitation classic will be written by Kenya Barris (creator of TV’s ‘Black-Ish’) and Alex Barnow, with John Davis and Ira Napoliello producing.

Based on the novel by Ernest Tidyman, 1971’s ‘Shaft’ starred Richard Roundtree as the Harlem private detective of the title. It was a huge hit for studio MGM, kickstarting the blaxploitation cinema craze, and winning an Oscar for Isaac Hayes’ unforgettable theme song.

Two official sequels followed in ‘Shaft’s Big Score’ and ‘Shaft In Africa’ (as well as a short-lived TV spin-off and five further novels by Tidyman), and in 2000 John Singleton directed a reboot for Paramount starring Samuel L Jackson in the lead, with supporting cast including Vanessa L Williams, Christian Bale and Busta Rhymes. Technically this film was also a sequel, as Jackson portrayed the nephew of the original John Shaft, with Roundtree making an appearance.

More recently, the series was alluded to in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained,’ with the sly implication that Kerry Washington’s Broomhilda von Shaft was an ancestor of the iconic character.

Writer Kenya Barris has been attached to this new take on ‘Shaft’ since summer 2015, around which time producer John Davis told Collider the film would be “a reinvention of the story so that it’s both fresh and harkens back to what we love about that character. It’s drama, but it’s going to be drama with a lot of fun moments. A lot of lighter moments.” The producer also declared the character “the greatest badass.”

Tim Story is best known to film audiences for directing ‘Barbershop,’ the ‘Ride Along’ series and the first two ‘Fantastic Four’ movies.

No casting news or potential release dates have yet been announced for ‘Shaft.’ Will we be keeping an eye out for more news on the subject? Daaaaaaaaaaamn right.

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