'St Elmo's Fire' is getting modern TV reboot

Joel Schumacher's original film gave rise to the seminal Brat Pack

Andrew Mccarthy, Mare Winningham, Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez in St Elmo’s Fire. Courtesy Columbia Pictures
Powered by automated translation

Cult '80s "Brat Pack" movie St Elmo's Fire is set to get a TV series reboot thanks to American network NBC and Sony's Columbia Pictures.

The series is described as a modern adaptation of the Joel Schumacher-directed and co-written film that followed a recently graduated group of close friends struggling with career, commitment and the newfound responsibilities of adulthood.

Josh Berman (Drop Dead Diva, The Mob Doctor) is set to write the script, and no casting details have been revealed as yet.

This is actually the second time Sony, whose Columbia Pictures division own the rights to the original movie, has attempted to reboot it. Back in 2009, the studio entered negotiations with ABC to produce a series written by Dan Bucatinsky and co-starring Bucatinsky and Topher Grace.

Schumacher was to work as executive producer on that project, and Bucatinsky said at the time of the planned series: "I feel it is time to re-create Friends in the hourlong genre and feel like this is the perfect opportunity." The show never made it to screens, however.

The original film starred Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and Mare Winningham and revolved around a group of Georgetown University graduates as they adjusted to life and adulthood after college.

St. Elmo's Fire grossed $37.8 million domestically on its 1985 release on a $10M budget. The film's cast, as well as the ensemble cast of John Hughes' The Breakfast Club, released the same year and featuring many of the same cast, plus Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, came to be known as the Brat Pack. That monicker would later be extended to the casts of films influenced by these two youthful dramas such as Less Than Zero and Pretty in Pink.

The name was a play on the 1950s Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and friends, and the '80s iteration would go on to include the likes of Tom Cruise and Robert Downey Jr among its members.