As evidenced by the recent trailer for Point Break, nothing in Hollywood is sacred. No matter how special a movie once was, if it’s decades old then the fat cats of Tinsel Town are ready to drag it out of the archives and wring its neck dry of every available penny at the box office. So it should come as no surprise that a Kindergarten Cop reboot is officially in the works, and detective John Kimble will return to the big screen. Only this time instead of Pamela Reed playing Kimble’s sidekick as ‘Detective Phoebe O’Hara’ the sidekick in the reboot will reportedly be “an Indian sidekick named Sanjit”. So there’s that. The only actor I’m comfortable with right now for that role is Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley, Portlandia), because he’s one of the funniest living men right now. Aside from that I’m not sure there’s anyone that’ll be able to bring enough charm to that role in Hollywood.
Showbiz 411 was first to break the news about a Kindergarten Cop reboot officially being in the works. Here’s what we know so far:
The new film comes from Universal’s 1440 division, which typically remakes old movies into sequels for VOD. This one may be a stalking horse for a TV series of some kind, too.
The new film will be directed by Michael Don Paul (“The Island”) from a script by David H. Steinberg, who wrote “American Pie.” The new Kindergarten cop is a leading man type with an Indian sidekick named Sanjit. They’re on the trail of a missing flash drive from the Federal Witness protection program. Somehow it’s wound up in a kindergarten class. Flimsy premise, but it puts him side by side with a beautiful teacher and they hit it off. There’s also bad guys involved– this time they’re Albanian.
I’m told producers are looking for cross over names from TV. Since they’ve had so much fun doing a Lifetime movie, maybe Will Ferrell and Kristin Wiig can try this next!
Before we get to details on the upcoming Kindergarten Cop reboot and what we know/what we can expect, I think it’s important that we first power rank all the quotes from the original Kindergarten Cop (1990):
Detective John Kimble: “We’re going to play a wonderful game called… ‘Who is my daddy and what does he do?”‘
Detective John Kimble: “It’s not a tumor! It’s not a tumor. At all!”
Joseph: “Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.”
Detective John Kimble: “Thanks for the tip!”
Detective John Kimble: “I’m the party pooper.”
Detective John Kimble:
Detective John Kimble:
And now we can get back to what we know and what we can guess about the Kindergarten Cop reboot that’s officially going to production…
Will we see Arnold Schwarzengger make an appearance in the Kindergarten Cop reboot? This is a question I would have asked Arnold myself when I interviewed him just a few weeks ago had I know a Kindergarten Cop reboot was in the works (the interview I’m referring to was when Arnold and I talked about his favorite explosions and how much he bench presses these days, click here to read my interview with Arnold in full). We can only dream that Arnold will make a guest appearance in the film, but given the Terminator’s proclivity to appear in franchise reboots (see every Terminator ever) I think there’s a solid chance we’ll see him.
So I think we can safely assume Arnold won’t appear AS Detective John Kimble (if he appears at all). The villain will be Albanian, and I can’t imagine the Albanian-American community will take kindly to that. And the sidekick will be Indian, which from what I’ve read on Twitter a lot of people are not cool with but I’m actually on board with, especially if they’re able to cast Kumail Nanjiani, a man who exudes the funny.