The box office hit of 1994, True Lies, is now being made into a television series. The film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis as Harry and Helen Tasker. To his family, Harry worked in computer sales, but he was actually a spy. Helen worked as a legal secretary and was raising their daughter, but she wanted more excitement than her suburban life. She got more than she bargained for when Harry and Helen were kidnapped, and she found out her husband was a spy.
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Reboots are very popular in Hollywood. The Halloween franchise recently got rebooted. The Jurassic World reboot movies recently came to their conclusion. Karate Kid got the TV treatment for its reboot, Cobra Kai, which is also nearing its end. The Lord of the Rings also got made into a prequel TV series that has only just started. Studios feel like it’s a safe bet to use established IP. It has worked to varying degrees.
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CBS’s True Lies Show Is A Reboot Of The 1994 Movie
On the surface, CBS’s True Lies series resembles the original. Steve Howey and Ginger Gonzaga are playing Harry and Helen Tasker. Even Harry’s friend and colleague has the same name Gib, originally played by Tom Arnold and now by Omar Benson Miller. There are a lot of callbacks to the original, but showrunner Matt Nix has updated the original story for a modern audience, which makes True Lies a reboot.
As with watching many things from the 90s, there are problematic things that were deemed acceptable at the time. For example, while Jamie Lee Curtis’ striptease scene became iconic, it doesn’t resonate the same in 2023. Helen was only dancing for her husband, but she didn’t know that. Besides updating scenes like that, there are many opportunities for technological updates, too. 1994 True Lies director, James Cameron, is also on board as an executive producer, so there’s sure to be DNA from the original movie.
Why 1994’s True Lies Was Made Into A TV Show
CBS is now making a bet on the True Lies IP almost three decades after the original film. However, this is not the first attempt to bring True Lies to the small screen. Arrow’s Marc Guggenheim developed an update in 2017 for FOX. There were even rumors about it being created for Disney+ in 2019. It’s hard to get a show on the air, so there are many reasons why these could have fallen through. Finally, Matt Nix and CBS were able to make it work.
The True Lies pilot takes the same direction as the film, but it does in about 43 minutes what the film does in about two and a half hours. The series wants to focus more on Helen and Harry working together as agents, so the pilot is primarily there to get them to that point. The movie only briefly showed the couple working together during the end credits. This makes more sense for a TV show and a reboot. Remaking the film exactly how it was for today’s audience doesn’t make sense. There are other problematic storylines to change on top of the striptease scene. It can still capture the action and comedy but with a more modernized take.
True Lies premiers on Wednesday at 10 pm ET on CBS and streaming on Paramount +.
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