The Top 5 Cult Classics From My Childhood Reimagined As (Adult) TV Shows

Hello shirtless Daniel Day Lewis, welcome to my television. Some reboots just make sense.

by Johannah King-Slutzky

Ah yes, gem of barely-yesteryear The Last of the Mohicans is becoming a TV miniseries, FX recently announced. And Terminator, which has already been made into a horrible Fox TV series, is cycling back into a fifth movie (!!!). Sure the TV-Mohicans won't actually sport a cleavage-y Daniel Day Lewis, nor the epic-yet-sprawling soundtrack I loved so much as a kid. I'm still on board. But what will become of my other beloved childhood cult classics? Hooksexup conducted a formal investigation to come to the following conclusions to the question: How would you reboot your favorite childhood cult classics as (adult) TV shows?

1. Hocus Pocus

In the reboot, Hocus Pocus will be a Girls style ensemble TV program about three old-before-their-time twentysomethings who live in Bushwick, love Pottery Barn candles, and spend the occasional evening eating straight coolwhip while they trawl tumblr for pictures of pizza and cats. (I always thought there was something witchy-sounding about Bushwick anyway.) In the TV reboot Binx the cat is actually a human with an animal suit fetish but he has a lovable mop of hair and great abs so Bette Midler's character dates him anyway. Outspoken and adventurous Bettle Midler takes Binx for granted but ultimately cries in a graveyard during the season finale until Binx runs to her aid by the light of the supermoon.

2. Alaska

You know, the one with prepubescent pre-Angel, pre-Mad Men Vincent Kartheiser in it. Like Hocus Pocus, this movie also had Thora Birch in it...weird. For the uninitiated, Alaska was a classic '90s movie about two kids and a polar bear braving the frigid, poacher-laden odds to rescue their crashed pilot father. In the adult TV version Alaska will be recast in the model of Twin Peaks in order to give Vincent Kartheiser room to be as creepy as possible. Snow and trees are also involved in both Alaska and Twin Peaks, so it's a natural fit. In the reboot, Thora Birch grows up and becomes a detective who, in a frenzy of cleanse-induced caffeine deprivation, one day has an inexplicable dream about a dancing polar bear. The poacher is Bob, natch.

3. Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters was a great couple of movies, but it would make an even better TV show, especially if injected with that sweet, sweet antihero juice we're all craving these days. That's right, I want Bill Murray's character to go rogue a la Walter White in Breaking Bad. In the reboot, all three ghostbusters start up their supernatural services in an abandoned car wash after Bill Murray is diagnosed with cancer. At first their craft is considered a bunch of junk science, but when Bill decides to hunker down and study up he discovers the existence of ectoplasm and starts selling it to occultists as an aphrodisiac called "green slime." During TV-Ghostbusters' off season there is a Long Island Medium promotional crossover. When Dan Aykroyd is tasked with fighting the destructor (eventually imagined up as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the movie version), Aykroyd simply puts on his porkpie hat and whisper-chants "I am the danger, I am the one who knocks" until the would-be giant marshmallow poofs away.

4. Pretty In Pink

Molly Ringwald already dons a princess-y pink gown for the climactic prom portion of this '80s classic, so it's not hard to re-imagine the reboot of PiP as another three-initial show, Game of Thrones. In the more adult-themed TV reboot Pretty In Pink is heavy on warring high school factions. House of Prep patriarch James Spader is an expert at sexposition, but the real jolt comes from the program's romantic leads: following in the footsteps of Cersei and Jamie's unholy union, in the TV version of PiP Andie and Duckie eventually start doin' it.

5. Fight Club

It's inexplicable to me that nobody has ever made this comparison before: Fight Club is so obviously the inheritor of the shy/manic Janus genius that is the TV program My So Called Life.  Meek-yet-promising Angela Chase is Ed Norton while the boisterous Rayanne Graff is Brad Pitt. Even their hair matches. Flight Club was not exactly G-rated in the first place but Jared Leto is in both? I just like this comparison.