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By: Mychal Denzel Smith | TheLoop21 (Add to your loop)
Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:00

Join us in promoting 'A Different World: The Movie' and here's why.

Every couple of years, Hollywood trots out a new movie adapted from an old television show. Whether it’s because of a lack of original ideas or a genuine desire to reinterpret and re-imagine beloved small-screen characters for a new time period, television-to-film adaptions have become a staple of the Hollywood agenda.

To date, not one of these adaptions have been from a television show with a majority black cast (save for live-action version of the animated series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids). In 2005, Cedric the Entertainer, Mike Epps, and Gabrielle Union starred in an adaptation of the 1950s sitcom The Honeymooners, but the original television version did not feature a black cast. True to form, Hollywood is ignoring black people.

But let’s say Hollywood was open to the idea of turning a black television show into a movie: which one should be first? There are a few seminal black sitcoms that would make prime candidates, chief among them Good Times, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and The Cosby Show.

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Good Times could make for an interesting film, but would likely meet the same criticism films such as Boyz N the Hood or Precious received about choosing to highlight (or exploit, depending on your perspective) stereotypes of the black poor/underclass. Sanford and Son may be difficult to translate into modern times, unless one considers the 2010 version of professional junk-man to be a trader of goods via eBay and Craigslist. Also, in the age of Obama and the Tea Party, a movie about a black man who is less-than enlightened about different cultures may not be politically expedient.

The same can be said for a movie based on The Jeffersons, though in light of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco, a film about realizing your prejudices and overcoming them may go over well with audiences...or not. And The Cosby Show, as the name implies, is so dependent on the gravitas and specific comedic intuition of Bill Cosby that filling his role with someone doing a cheap imitation for 90 minutes could prove unbearable.

If it were up to me, and trust me it’s not, the first black television to get a film treatment would go to another Cosby-helmed project: A Different World. A Different World is the perfect candidate. A re-imagining of the fictitious HBCU Hillman College would explore a lot of the themes the original series touched on, such as class conflict among black people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, the exploration of dating and young love, the struggle of youth culture to be respected by their elders, and the wearing of sunglasses at night (though to his credit, Dwayne Wayne always kept his shades flipped to the up position).

In addition, it would have new millennial issues to address, such as the continued relevancy of HBCUs, black student activism in the Obama era, and the effects of social networking on the lives of students.