A 2010s reboot of “Police Academy” was canceled after a tragic real-life incident sparked a national debate about the police use of force.
On the June 17 episode of the podcast “Funny You Ask with Ike Barinholtz,” the comedian told a story to guest Joel McHale about an awkward pitch meeting he had with his writing partner, David Stassen. The pair was writing on a “Police Academy” reboot, produced by and slated to star Barinholtz’s “Mad TV” co-stars Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, but an ill-fated meeting wasn’t what actually ended up putting the project on hold.
“Years ago, my partner and I got hired to rewrite ‘Police Academy’ for New Line Cinema,” Barinholtz said. “I don’t even know if he’s still alive, we might have to cut this, but the guy who created the original ‘Police Academy’ came with the deal. So they said to us, ‘We want you guys to write it and make it dirty, rated R, modern.’ He’ll be at some of the meetings, but we don’t have to listen to him. All he wanted to do was give us notes: ‘But we would never do that in the first movie. Never, never, never. Oh no, no, no. Mahoney would never say that,’ and he was adamant that we would have the original cast in the movie.
“He wanted them to have big parts and we were ‘yada yada,’” Barinholtz continued. “So when we’re doing the pitch, my partner was like, ‘So we have this scene and that’s when we see all the original cast. We see Hightower, we see Tackleberry, we have…’ — he’s just naming all dead people. And I was like…he didn’t even do research to find out who’s still alive in the cast. He was not happy. But more importantly, as we were developing the film, Mike Brown got shot and all of a sudden, and we were making the movie for Key and Peele, and people were like, ‘We’re not making a cop comedy right now where we’re having these two hilarious Black actors play police officers.’”
On August 9, 2014, an 18-year-old Black man named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, which launched more than a week of protests, in which police use of force and militarization came into debate. The officer was investigated but never indicted for any civil rights violations.
The 1984 comedy “Police Academy” starred Steve Guttenberg, Kim Cattrall and Bubba Smith, and was a box office hit that launched six sequels and both a live-action and animated series. Attempts at a reboot have started and stalled since 2003.
Barinholtz is currently starring in the popular showbiz satire “The Studio,” while Peele is working on his next secret film and Key is filming the “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” sequel.
