Lost in Adam McKay's numerous projects, from Anchorman 2 to doing rewrites on Ant-Man, is that he was supposed to have begun work on a remake of the 1974 Sidney Poitier/Bill Cosby crime comedy, Uptown Saturday Night. It even had a powerhouse duo guaranteed to earn some serious $$$ at the box office, with Denzel Washington and Will Smith (!!!!) set to star with a screenplay from Neighbors writer, Nicholas Stoller. But nothing has come of it, and McKay recently revealed to Collider that the promising film has been canned by Warner Bros.
McKay: “In the case of Uptown Saturday Night, that actually isn’t happening. I did a script with Nicholas Stoller and they didn’t quite respond to it. I mean who knows, if they come back with a great script from other writers I could reattach, but for now that doesn’t look like that’s going. So I was happy that I found these other projects because that was one I thought I was doing and it just didn’t quite get there.”
I'm of two minds on this because Uptown Saturday Night, which follows two friends' crazed attempts to retrieve a stolen winning lotto ticket, is a personal favorite that doesn't need to be messed with. But the thought of seeing Denzel and Smith together is something that may never came around again. McKay's next project will instead be his economic crisis drama, The Big Short.
