Little Garwood wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2014 4:19 pm
IMO the time for Tom Selleck-MPI TV movies has long passed. In the early '90s he was still etching out a movie career but by mid-decade he was back doing TV movies. I can understand the need to extend one's creative range, as well. Plus, MPI was still too recent for him to give up other roles more interesting to him and I respect TS for wanting to do that.
Another thing to consider is John Hillerman would probably not have appeared in any MPI TV movies, since he has been retired since, what, 1996?
Rumor was there were 3 storyboards floating around circa 1999-2001
Crossroads
Old Stick
Aloha, Magnum
I remember hearing that Tom Clancy was associated with one of them. Selleck said as much in an interview.
I also remember that Selleck was pretty insistent that it be a feature film and didn’t want just another “reunion movie”. I understand his feelings about that, but a feature film is a whole different level of financing and Universal was unable or unwilling to finance such a film. That seems to be where it died.
Little Garwood wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2014 4:19 pm
IMO the time for Tom Selleck-MPI TV movies has long passed. In the early '90s he was still etching out a movie career but by mid-decade he was back doing TV movies. I can understand the need to extend one's creative range, as well. Plus, MPI was still too recent for him to give up other roles more interesting to him and I respect TS for wanting to do that.
Another thing to consider is John Hillerman would probably not have appeared in any MPI TV movies, since he has been retired since, what, 1996?
Rumor was there were 3 storyboards floating around circa 1999-2001
Crossroads
Old Stick
Aloha, Magnum
I remember hearing that Tom Clancy was associated with one of them. Selleck said as much in an interview.
I also remember that Selleck was pretty insistent that it be a feature film and didn’t want just another “reunion movie”. I understand his feelings about that, but a feature film is a whole different level of financing and Universal was unable or unwilling to finance such a film. That seems to be where it died.
Uncle worked at Universal on the money side for many years. Universal was "Broke" in 1996 and unwilling to finance anything like a former TV show made into a full length feature film. Too much risk, and by then in 1999 Selleck was past his shelf life in regards to major motion pictures as his last movie as a #1, Mr. Baseball, lost around 20-million and Folks another 12-million 7 years previous. The TV series The Closer was canceled after10 or so episodes the previous year, no sir betting on Tom Selleck for a major motion picture in 1999, was not a good idea.
Factor in John Hillerman had retired, however he was willing to do voice parts as his weight had gotten up there.
I think Universal was correct as the money required would be in the 40-50 million dollar range.
T.Q. wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 1:20 pm
I can totally envision the Jesse Stone movies having been "Thomas Magnum" movies.
Retired from Navy. Living in Tidewater, Virginia. Friends in the police force he could help with cases.
They would have began the show with 8 years of character development already in the bag.
There could have been so much they could have explored linking it back to his former life and experiences.
Unfortunately, I think the biggest hindrance to a series of Magnum TV movies like you describe, was Selleck himself. As I mentioned above, he really didn’t want to do a reunion show and held out for a feature film. There were a lot of reunion shows in the 80’s and 90’s and many of them were poor quality. He was protecting the show from that, I believe. After the Rockford series of films was well received, I hoped he might change his mind.
I'd still like to see these scripts (and maybe even some of the unused original show scripts) brought to life in some way, like animation or stop motion. Silly, but would be fun to just see them in some visual medium.
"How fiendishly deceptive of you Magnum. I could have sworn I was hearing the emasculation of a large rodent."
