According to Deadline, New Line Cinema’s Shaft reboot has scored a director who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about, and his name is Tim Story. Best known for Fox’s first two Fantastic Four movies from 2005 and 2007, respectively, Story has carved out a healthy run of recent comedy hits, including Think Like a Man (and its sequel) and Ride Along (and its sequel).
As in the 2000 reboot where Samuel L. Jackson played the legendary detective’s nephew, the new one will reportedly be a loose sequel and focus on the son of John Shaft. It will be set in New York City.
The Shaft reboot has a script by Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow, and will be produced by Barris alongside John Davis and Ira Napoliello for Davis Entertainment.
Originally a 1970 novel by Ernest Tidyman, Shaft was famously made into a feature film, directed by Gordon Parks, in 1971. Richard Roundtree played the title role, Detective John Shaft, in the original film, immediately reprising the role for two sequels: Shaft’s Big Score in 1972 and Shaft in Africa in 1973. Later in ’73, Roundtree played Shaft once again for a short-lived CBS television series.
The small screen Shaft ran for only seven episodes, but Roundtree returned more than two decades later for a cameo in John Singleton’s Shaft reboot. Although Samuel L. Jackson played the lead in the 2000 release, the film actually maintained a singular continuity with the rest of the franchise, revealing that Jackson’s Detective John Shaft was actually the nephew of Roundtree’s.
