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Vin Diesel has been wanting to make a Kojak movie for years. He must be a big fan of the original 1970s CBS TV series, which starred fellow bald actor Telly Savalas. The project has experienced a few stops and starts, but now it looks to be moving forward again because Deadline reports that Philip Gawthorne has just been hired to write the screenplay.
Gawthorne is a British writer who's dabbled in TV shows like EastEnders and Holby City before making the jump to features by writing the upcoming remake of Cube. Even though he doesn't have a ton of experience, I think I'd still prefer him to this adaptation's original writers, Bond scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade; I feel like they've done more harm than good in the world of 007.
Kojak followed the title character, a popsicle-loving New York City lieutenant who solved tough investigations. I've never seen the show, but this sounds like the kind of broad enough topic that could actually warrant a film adaptation without angering diehard fans of the original material, since it seems like there's a lot of room to play around with the story as long as they get the essence of the lead character right. We'll see if Diesel is up to the task, and if Gawthorne will be the one to deliver a usable draft to finally get this film into production.
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