Courtesy of Warner Bros., The Bodyguard is the next classic movie to get remade. Tony-nominated playwright Matthew L&ópez (The Inheritance) has been tapped by the studio to write a reimagining of the romantic drama that brought together Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner in 1992. The new movie will be directly inspired by the original version, but very little else has been revealed about its plot.
Lawrence Kasdan of Kasdan Pictures, the writer-producer of the original movie, is producing this new take on The Bodyguard along with Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich of Rideback. Rideback’s Nick Reynolds is also on board to executive produce. This project has been trapped in development hell for the past decade with Dan Lin’s involvement dating back to 2011. No cast is currently attached to this version, but pairings floated in the past include Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson along with Channing Tatum and Cardi B.
Using a screenplay by Kasdan, Mick Jackson directed The Bodyguard. The movie follows a former United States Secret Service agent turned bodyguard (Kevin Costner) who is hired to protect a famous actress and singer (Whitney Houston) from a stalker. Originally written by Kasdan in the 1970s, the movie was first envisioned with Steve McQueen and Diana Ross in the lead roles. All’s well that ends well, as the movie that got made was a huge hit at the box office as the second-highest grossing movie of 1992.
The Bodyguard is also very memorable for its soundtrack, which sold over 45 million copies to become the best-selling movie soundtrack of all time. It won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year with two singles nominated for Best Original Song. Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You” is the standout song, as the single also stands as the best-selling physical single by a female artist of all time. Many fans also distinctly remember the official poster, though Costner has since clarified that it’s not even Whitney in the iconic image.
“That wasn’t even Whitney actually,” Costner told EW in 2019. “She had gone home and that was her double, and her head was buried into my shoulder, which was appropriate anyway. She was frightened.”
“I picked that picture out because my friend Ben Glass took it…I sent it to Warner Bros. and I go, ‘There’s the poster.’ Because it was so evocative. It wasn’t special photography; it wasn’t anything,” Costner added. “They didn’t like it at first because you couldn’t see Whitney’s face,” he explains. “And so they sent me like five mockups where they put her head [on it] where she’s looking [out]. I said ‘Guys, I think we had it the first time.’ That it was really, and that ended up being the poster.”
I just found out that Whitney Houston was not on The Bodyguard poster. He’s carrying an extra 😲 pic.twitter.com/Ox6kFVTaA6
— Monica (@TvMonicaTv) June 24, 2019
Costner also said that there were plans at one point for his character to return in The Bodyguard 2. The actor told People in 2019 that he had even had discussions with Princess Diana about having her serve as the new lead star with Costner protecting her in the movie. Sadly, Costner also says he didn’t get the screenplay for the planned sequel until August 1997, one day before Diana’s death.
“I just remember her being incredibly sweet on the phone, and she asked the question, she goes, ‘Are we going to have like a kissing scene?’ She said it in a very respectful way,” Costner remembered. “She was nervous because her life was very governed. And I said, ‘Yeah, there’s going to be a little bit of that, but we can make that okay too.'”
Recently, Kristen Stewart has taken on the role of Princess Di in the acclaimed movie Spencer. Meanwhile, it’s not surprising that there have been attempts for years in Hollywood to get a remake of The Bodyguard off the ground, given its past success. There’s no indication when this new take will begin production, and it’s also unclear if Costner will be involved with this new incarnation. This news comes to us from Variety.