As Roland Deschain says in Stephen King's epic series The Dark Tower, "ka is a wheel." Things always seem to turn back to the way they started. In 1963 ABC launched the hugely popular series The Fugitive. The show, which ran for four seasons, tells the story of Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen) who is framed for the murder of his wife by a mysterious one-armed man. Thirty years later, the show was adapted into a major feature film starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, for which the latter won an Academy Award.
Now things have come full circle. An updated television version of The Fugitive is set to release in just a few months on the streamer Quibi. In anticipation of its April launch, Quibi dropped a teaser trailer for the upcoming series. Quibi's The Fugitive is a re-imagining with the circumstances being decidedly different than the original TV series or the film. In this iteration the plot revolves around Mike Russo, an everyday blue collar worker, who is framed for an explosion that occurs on a Los Angeles subway train. Boyd Holbrook will take on the role of Russo with actor Keifer Sutherland portraying detective Clay Bryce, the officer trying to bring him in.
If you're going to do an updated version of a classic television series, it's always helpful to have a fresh take. That seems to be the case here, in that the wife murder plot has been swapped for a terrorist bombing. Additionally, Mike is clearly not a doctor and there doesn't seem to be any one-armed man scenarios involved here. I'd say the spirit of The Fugitive is present, if not the skeleton or organs. This trailer definitely has some 24 vibes going on (a show Sutherland starred in for years). Depending on your perspective that could be a good thing or a bad thing.
So what do you guys think of this teaser? Are you excited for a 21st century take on The Fugitive? Is Holbrook the right actor for the job? Any chance Keifer Sutherland's character goes full Jack Bauer and screams, "WHERE ARE THE BOMBS??!!!" Sound off in the comments below.
Quibi unveils itself to the streaming world on April 6.