James Cameron must’ve gotten tired of fans asking him if he’ll ever do a sequel to True Lies, his hit 1994 spy thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. (His standard answer for years has been that he didn’t think audiences had as much of a taste for stories featuring terrorism after 9/11. But plenty of stuff since then has proven him wrong, most notably 24.) Cameron has decided to develop True Lies as a television show, and he’s shopping it around the networks right now.
The show will be overseen and developed by writer Rene Echevarria, who worked with Cameron on his only other TV foray, Dark Angel. Echevarria currently works on Castle and MTV‘s upcoming Teen Wolf.
The film told the story of Harry Tasker, a spy for a super-secret government organization, who keeps his double identity a secret from his wife Helen. But hijinks (and high-octane action) ensue when Helen finally finds out the truth. I’m wondering if the True Lies TV show would focus on Harry and Helen in their post-movie days, when they’re working together as husband-and-wife spies. Or, might the show reboot the entire tale and play things out differently and more slowly. It might be fun to watch the story all over again, knowing that eventually Helen will find out Harry’s secret and join the team.
If it depicts events from after the movie, then it would follow a storyline that’s an awful lot like another husband-and-wife spies TV show that’s debuting next week: J.J. Abrams’ Undercovers. But with Cameron’s clout, it shouldn’t be hard to find a home for True Lies.