(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
In an era where nearly every IP gets a reboot, some fans might wonder why the hit 80s and 90s police comedy franchise "Police Academy" has never been revived. The long-running box office success spawned six feature film sequels and two television spin-offs, but the series has been dormant since "Police Academy: The Series" went off the air in 1998.
(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
It's not for a lack of trying. Hollywood has been attempting to bring back "Police Academy" since 2003, with various versions of a new film entering development. At one point, even the comedy duo Key & Peele—Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele—were attached to develop a new story, but all of these projects have since stalled.
While there could be many reasons for the delays, actor-comedian Ike Barinholtz recently revealed on his podcast "Funny You Ask" that the version developed by Peele and Key was ultimately shelved due to the frequency of real-world police shootings of Black individuals.
Barinholtz recalled: "I think I can share this now. A few years ago, my partner and I were hired by New Line Cinema to rewrite the new 'Police Academy' movie. The people who created the original 'Police Academy' were spearheading the project—I don't even know if he's still alive, we might have to cut this (laughs)—and they told us, 'We want you to write this, and we want it to be dirty, R-rated, and modern. He'll be at some of the meetings, but we don't have to listen to him.'"
However, Barinholtz added that their one mandate was to give the original cast members significant roles. Ironically, the studio hadn't bothered to check which actors were still alive, and many of the cast members they wanted for a reunion had already passed away.
(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
Barinholtz then explained the ultimate reason the reboot was scrapped, revealing that Key and Peele were not only attached as co-writers and producers but were also set to star. "But more importantly, while we were developing the movie, Michael Brown was shot," he said. "We were writing it for Keegan and Peele, and all of a sudden, people were like, 'We can't make a comedy about police right now with these two hilarious Black actors playing cops. Sorry, it's just not something we can do.'"
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The Michael Brown mentioned by Barinholtz (pictured above) was a Black man fatally shot by a white police officer in 2014. Brown was misidentified as an accomplice in a robbery and was killed on the scene. The tragedy sparked massive public outrage, and with the Black Lives Matter movement gaining momentum at the time amid a string of similar police shootings, the backlash was immense. New Line Cinema presumably decided to pull the plug on the project due to the widespread negative public perception of the police.