The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension stands as one of those divisive cult movies that people either seem to love or loathe for all its OTT glory (for the record, we're in the former camp). And it famously never got the sequel promised in its end credits, but now Kevin Smith is looking to change that, planning a TV adaptation of the movie and the story for the follow-up.
Buckaroo Banzai saw Peter Weller as the swaggering yet intellectual adventurer/surgeon/rock musician Banzai and his band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, taking on evil alien invaders. If you've never seen it, it's twice as mad as you'd expect, even given that synopsis.
The embryonic TV version come about because of praise Smith received for directing a recent episode of superhero series The Flash across the pond. Praised for bringing the story (written by X-Men: First Class' Zack Stentz) to life with charm and ambition, the gig has swung some doors open for Smith and that led to a meeting with MGM about a potential Buckaroo TV series. “I’ve never f-----g done anything in my life that had more people saying, holy s--t, good job,” Smith said on his Hollywood Babble-On podcast. “Like 22-year career, man. Not even in the beginning, when they liked me and s--t.”
So what does he envision? “Basically you just do the entire movie for season one, then season two you finally do the sequel we’ve all dreamed about, Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League.” It's still at a very early stage, and the plan is now to approach networks and streaming services to judge interest. For Smith's full conversation about the idea, listen to the podcast below.