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Paramount Moving Forward with a Comedic Baywatch Movie

by Alex Billington
July 7, 2009

If you follow the industry, you heard all about that executive shakeup at Paramount a few weeks ago (read about it here). Well, one of the first projects that new president Adam Goodman is looking to put on the fast-track is a big screen version of "Baywatch." Yep, you heard that right. We've got "A-Team" and "T.J. Hooker" movies in the works, why the hell not "Baywatch" too? Paramount hired Jeremy Garelick, of Is This Your Mother? and The Break-Up, to rewrite and direct the feature. The original script, written by Jay Scherick and David Ronn in 2005, was too "heavy on action," so they hired Garelick to turn it into a comedy.

"It felt like the template to do a movie that was similar to Stripes and Police Academy, the comedies I loved growing up," Garelick told Variety. "Rather than trying to pitch the tone, I figured it would be easier to write the first act to convey who these characters were." He pitched half of the rewrite to Paramount even though he has never actually seen the original TV show. In addition to writing the script for The Break-Up, Garelick did an uncredited rewrite of The Hangover and has two other scripts sold as well - Murray at Large and The Insane Laws. This guy already sounds like a screenwriter I'm not going to like very much.

The new Baywatch script now focuses on two unlikely lifeguard candidates trying to catch on alongside the buff bodies that will be as abundant in the film as they were in the TV series. I already know exactly what this is going to be like - and I'm already sick. "Baywatch" is one of those shows that is meant to stay a campy 90's classic forever and shouldn't show up in any media form ever again, except for movies like Borat. This falls right in line with that stupid Three Stooges movie from the Farrelly Brothers - it shouldn't be made.

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