New Line Cinema is in negotiations to acquire the rights to classic sitcom Three’s Company and has hired screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (He’s Just Not That Into You) to author the script for a film adaptation. Robert Cort (Cocktail, Runaway Bride) will produce the project, which will be set in the 1970s, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Three’s Company, which aired from 1977 to 1984 on ABC, focused on an unlikely trio of Santa Monica roommates: two single women and a man pretending to be gay in order to circumvent the era’s narrower housing norms. The series – which was based on Seventies British show Man About the House – became a ratings smash across eight seasons, delighting viewers with physical comedy and innuendo-laced dialogue.
John Ritter secured one Emmy win and two nominations for his performance as Jack Tripper. Joyce DeWitt played Janet Wood, while Suzanne Somers became a sex symbol as ditzy Chrissy Snow over the show’s first five seasons. Notable side characters included Tripper’s womanizing best friend Larry Dallas (Richard Kline) and landlords played by Norman Fell and Audra Lindley (and, later, Andy Griffith Show icon Don Knotts).
TV nostalgia has been booming in movies in recent years. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum teamed for 2012’s 21 Jump Street and 2014 sequel 22 Jump Street, adaptations of the late-Eighties police procedural show. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Zac Efron recently began filming on a film adaptation of Nineties camp staple Baywatch, and Netflix rebooted family comedy Full House for the WTF-worthy Fuller House earlier this year.
