The Time Broken Lizard Turned Down a Remake of ‘Caddyshack’

By  · Published on July 31st, 2012

It’s easy to lose perspective in a world where originality seems all but dead in Hollywood, but the reality is that there are only about six remakes made every year, and that’s not so bad. The problem is that far more than six are announced, and even though not all of them get made, each new remake in development is another reason to slap your forehead and wonder why studio executives are spending so much time living in the past. Especially if the movie is an out-and-out classic.

Fortunately, sometimes the potential talent involved has the foresight to see a bad idea and the common sense to pass. For Jay Chandrasekhar of Broken Lizard, the opportunity that was too good to take was a remake of Caddyshack. The comedian politely doesn’t reveal whose concept it was, but his information casts a shadow of doubt on this otherwise optimistic list of 80s movies that aren’t being remade.

“I was actually approached by someone high up in the filmmaking world about remaking Cadddyshack,” said Chandrasekhar. “I said, ‘I think people will string me up if I tried to do that.’ I thought about it for a day, and I called them up and said, ‘I’d have loved to have had this conversation, but I could never.’ And I don’t know. I don’t believe you can remake comedy films that are great and have them really work. I think you can remake serious films that were bad and make them into comedies or something with a great idea and work on it, but I don’t think you should ever remake a film that was good. I think that’s just asking for trouble.”

Of course fellow Lizard Kevin Heffernan followed up by saying they were planning a shot-for-shot remake of Grease with Steve Lemme playing Sandy.

You can check out the full interview here.

Movie stuff at VanityFair, Thrillist, IndieWire, Film School Rejects, and The Broken Projector Podcast@brokenprojector | Writing short stories at Adventitious.