AUGUST 09, 2011
NBC blinks order for ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ script after CBS twitches nose for ‘Bewitched’
by shf
HOLLYWOOD (FastLaugh.com) — NBC, not to be outdone by rival network CBS, greenlighted a script order today for a potential remake of 60s sitcom, ‘I Dream of Jeannie.’
‘Jeannie’ ran for five seasons on NBC, from 1965 to 1970 and starred Barbara Eden as Jeannie, an impulsive Genie who lives with and eventually marries Captain Anthony Nelson, a U.S. Air Force astronaut (Larry Hagman).
Updating the original 60s storyline that had astronaut Nelson discovering a mysterious bottle containing a Genie (Jeannie) when his one-man space capsule lands near a deserted island in the South Pacific, the 2011 reboot (set in 2003) features Captain Anthony Nelson, a gay “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” U.S. Marine from the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines (1/7), Charlie Company who storms one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Baghdad during the takeover of the complex during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
While securing Saddam’s palace, Tony notices a strange bottle that rolls by itself. When he rubs it after removing the stopper, smoke starts billowing out and an overjoyed Arabic-speaking Genie in drag, wearing a head-to-toe hot pink chador, materializes and peers at him through the eye-slit.
Genie, who had been trapped in his bottle since Saddam fled the palace to hide in a spider hole, is so grateful to be released and so smitten with hunky Tony, that he hides his bottle in Tony’s backpack and follows him back to the Marine base.
Genie creates havoc for Tony at the barracks in Iraq, very nearly outing him several times. After Tony’s tour of duty ends, Genie follows him to Twenty-Nine Palms Marine Base in California and sets up house in Tony’s footlocker.
No word yet on who may be tapped to play Tony in the pilot, but rumors were flying around Hollywood tonight that Andy Serkis, best known to millions of fans for his CGI portrayals of the creature Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as the giant ape Kong in King Kong, and as Caesar in Rise of the Apes, will be offered the role of the chador-clad, gender-bending Genie.