Quantum Leap was one of my favourite TV Shows.
The premise was simple but provided tons of entertainment. Sam Beckett is stuck in a quantum loop as he leaps through time into other people’s bodies. Inevitably, the person he leaps into will be of some importance and he has to make sure the timeline carries on.
It ran a full five seasons before it was canceled in 1995. And now a decade and a half later we get news that Quantum Leap the Movie is in development!
At Comic-Con ’10 at the panel for A Leap of Faith—A Quantum Leap Retrospective Bakula revealed that the movie version is happening. Yes!..
“The good news is that Don [Quantum Leap creator Donald P. Bellisario] is working on the film script and has a big time Hollywood producer who wants to do it … It’s about time. But what I always thought would happen, happened … [that he’s now too old for the role]. But Dean [Stockwell, who played Al] and I will have a part in it somehow.
Don did say that as he was writing, he told me he was having trouble, ‘getting you and Dean out of my head.’ But I know he will do it.”
Now it sounds like this will be a movie adaptation of Quantum Leap, and not just a film continuation to tie up the cliffhanger series.
See back when Quantum Leap was canceled, it came suddenly and the writers didn’t get a chance to write a finale. It was a season finale, and like any other season, it resulted in Scott Bacula’s character still stuck in the continuum, and not leaping back home. Before the next season started, they were told it wasn’t returning.
So with Bellisario saying he is having trouble with the script because he can’t get these actors out of his head, it sounds to me like he is re-writing Quantum Leap as a stand alone film, and the best we can hope for is a Stockwell cameo or Bacula saying “Oh Boy…”
My idea was not a film, but they should restart the TV series. Have it updated with an older Stockwell “Al” long since given up on his old friend Sam thinking he was gone to the space time continuum. Then after nearly 20 years of limbo, Ziggy (the time travel tracking computer) picks up a hit and they reopen the Quantum Leap program against orders, and the show is back on.
Or at least have a feature film where solving the Leap problem is the end result.
So as much as I want to see Quantum Leap, the opportunity for closure outweighs my hopes for adaptation.
