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TORONTO – The long-in-the-works movie version of 1980s TV series The Fall Guy is coming together once again, this time as a vehicle for Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson is in negotiations to star in a big-screen remake that McG is in talks to direct. Ashok Amritraj‘s Hyde Park Entertainment is financing the action film alongside WWE Studios. Writers Zack Stentz and Ashley Edward Miller (Thor, X-Men: First Class) executed the draft that attracted all the attention.
Amritraj is producing alongside Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, who have held the rights to the property for years. WWE Studios president Michael Luisi also is producing, while McG is in talks to produce as well. The film is being presented to foreign buyers at the Toronto Film Festival.
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Fall Guy was an ABC series that ran from 1981 to 1986 and starred Lee Majors as a Hollywood stunt man who supplemented his income by doing bounty hunter work. He was joined on his escapades, which usually involved him transferring a stunt from a movie to the job at hand, by his sidekick cousin (Douglas Barr) and a fetching female stunt actress played by Heather Thomas.
Hollywood has long been trying to translate Fall Guy to the silver screen. The project was set up for years at Warner Bros., and more recently at DreamWorks, where Parkes/MacDonald tried to get it off the ground with Casino Royale‘s Martin Campbell at the helm and Nicolas Cage starring.
Sources say Hyde Park, which is here in Toronto with the festival’s closing night film Life of Crime, will be officially shopping it at the festival in the coming week. Hyde Park will finance the film along with WWE.
Johnson, repped by WME and Gang Tyre, is about to begin shooting Fast & Furious 7.
McG, repped by WME, last directed 2012’s This Means War.
E-mail: Tatiana.Siegel@THR.com
Twitter: @TatianaSiegel27
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