Love it or hate it, Hollywood jumps on the surfing bandwagon from time to time, searching for the impossible balance of making it sexy to the masses without getting way too cheesy in the process. Ok let’s be real – maybe they always don’t give that much attention to whether or not things get cheesy.
Nonetheless, money is practically printed in Hollywood because it’s a town filled with people who do know how to tell a great story, and in 2002 the movie Blue Crush used the testosterone pit that is a North Shore lineup to examine female empowerment and ambition. You don’t have to be in the know to see how the irony of that location makes it the perfect place to tell that kind of story, and so Universal Pictures grossed a little over $51 million at the box office when it was all said and done – more than double the film’s budget.
On Thursday it was announced NBC will be giving the flick a TV series reboot. Brian Grazer was the film’s original producer and will be attached to the television remake as an executive producer. He’ll be working with Francie Calfo and Jillian Kugler, and the drama is currently being written by Hannah Schneider. Meanwhile, the log line for the series reads pretty close to the original movie’s: After a tragic accident, a surfer will work to revive her career and help save her local community, which is being threatened by commercialism and shady surf politics.
Beyond that, the network hasn’t revealed much about the new series they’re developing, like whether or not we’ll be seeing the likes of Keala Kennelly or Kala Alexander on camera again, who both started to get their acting chops when the film came to Oahu. Alexander’s said he got into the Screen Actors Guild with his role in 2002, and after the film, Kennelly went on to work as a host and actor while continuing her own surfing career in the women’s World Tour until 2007.
