Hardly a day goes by without some news connected to hacking scandals. But NBC is looking to revive a beloved team of cyber-vigilantes for a tv-take of 1992 film ‘Sneakers‘…
Nowadays hacking seem to be more about political candidate scandals and media corporation assets than the more romanticised notion of films that were released in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s been an age since Matthew Broderick played War Games and decades since a young Angelina Jolie appeared in Hackers. But 1992 film Sneakers holds a particularly warm place in the hearts of cinema-goers old enough to remember it.
Long before Anonymous even saw a V for Vendetta mask, the film told the story of a group of underground hackers and surveillance experts who found themselves hired to retrieve the ultimate coder-breaking equipment – and then besieged by interested parties from all sides. The group was led by Martin Bishop (Robert Redford) who had been on the FBI’s most-wanted list after he disappeared years before, narrowly avoiding being caught all those years ago by sheer chance, a fate far more fortunate than his old hacking partner, Cosmo (played by Ben Kingsley). The team included blind analyst Whistler (David Strathairn), ex ‘Company’ man Donald Crease (Sidney Poitier), the paranoid conspiracy-theorist ‘Mother (Dan Ackroyd) and the talented but reckless Carl (the late River Phoenix). They were a disparate group, but with a strong moral centre, only undertaking ‘jobs’ or ’causes’ close to their collective hearts, though preferably with nice paydays from ‘legally’ being hired to test companies’ security when possible. However there was a real danger that their latest job would get them arrested or killed, no matter how many favours they’d have to call in.
Now it seems that the concept could be the latest big-screen project to be heading to television. Industry site Deadline reports that NBC has put a reboot into development and is placing it in the hands of Tom Szentgygorgyi (a former executive producer on The Mentalist) and husband and wife producing team Walter Parkes and Laurie McDonald. Parkes co-wrote the original film so is something of an obvious choice.
Sneakers, a modest and memorable hit, originally seemed like a shoe-in for immediate either spin-offs or sequels, but they never came. The recent hacking controversies, coupled with the evergreen success of ‘vigilante heroes and anti-heroes’ in the vein of projects such as Leverage, Hustle, Ocean’s 11 or even the more recent Scorpion, now makes the project more appealing on various levels and it’s clear that even the year it may take to bring it to the screen could be a worthwhile investment.
Here’s the original trailer for the 1992 release…
