The idea seemed as bright and shiny as a marble bag full of jewels: a TV show about a teacher who decides to help some of her students do a shot-by-shot remake of the classic 1980s adventure The Goonies. However, the network on board, Fox, disagreed and buried it underground like it was One-Eyed Willy.
What’s the Goonies motto though? “Goonies never say die!” Variety reports the show, formerly referred to as the “Untitled Film Re-Enactment Project” but now titled Our Time, has truffle shuffled Chunk-style to Disney+. The idea comes from writer Sarah Watson who is working with Warner Bros. TV, Amblin, and the Donner Company, all of which remain on board.
“Sarah worked nonstop to deliver this incredible script, we had our table read, and then the world shut down for covid,” Clancy Collins White, exec VP and head of development for Warner Bros TV, told Variety. “So we came back many months later and finished the beautiful pilot, and it was an incredible cast, but unfortunately a little bit too young for Fox. And so we immediately swung into high gear and hit the town with it. We did not yet have anything in development at Disney+. It’s been another example of being able to carve a pathway where there wasn’t one by virtue of a great story, a great pilot, a great series. The deal has taken a while to make, but we’re really excited to be moving forward.”
As we previously reported, the show follows a substitute teacher who sees a special passion in a handful of students and helps them shoot their own version of the The Goonies, not unlike what fans have done with Toy Story 3 or Raiders of the Lost Ark. The result “will inspire a town in desperate need of hope in this love letter to the power of cinema, storytelling and dreams,” according to initial reports.
Though The Goonies was released by Warner Bros., that Amblin idea of a group of ragtag kids going on a treasure hunt feels very Disney. And Disney+ has done an excellent job of taking films that inspire a lot of nostalgia — High School Musical, The Mighty Ducks, etc. — and turning them into smart, relevant, modern TV. Our Time seems like it could be exactly that and we hope it generates lots of rich stuff.