After a few years of being in the proverbial Hollywood pipeline, The Weinstein Co. has green lighted a film adaptation of Gregory McDonald’s Fletch Won to be written and directed by Bill Lawrence with Zach Braff in the title role. Prior to this, Kevin Smith had been entertaining the notion of doing the exact same thing, but it never came to fruition.
Personally, I’m glad to see this thing finally in the full-on go mode. Having read a number of the Fletch books and being a fan, I can safely say that the first Fletch was fucked around with so much that it barely resembled the book at the end. Of course, Fletch Lives was not even based on any of the books and managed to do even more disservice to the whole series. Lawrence and Braff promise to keep Fletch Won edgier, which is exactly what the other flicks needed. Fletch was not a slaspstick, pie-in-the-face story, but that’s what it became. The novels are filled with dry humor and always have a real sense of suspense in them. They’re hard to put down.
Unlike Chevy Chase…who really doesn’t need any more space wasted on him from me.
