On a new episode of his podcast, Funny You Should Ask, Ike Barinholtz revealed that he was hired to rewrite a Police Academy reboot for his MadTV buddies Key and Peele. However, the entire project fell apart after police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown. “As we were developing the film, Mike Brown got shot and all of a sudden,” Barinholtz tells Joel McCale. “We were making the movie for Key and Peele, and people were like, ‘We’re not making a cop comedy right now where we’re having these two hilarious Black actors play police officers.'”
That was the smart call. Days after the Brown’s shooting death, the Damon Wayans Jr. and Jake Johnson buddy cop comedy, Let’s Be Cops, opened to intense criticism. Wayans Jr. even publicly stated that he wouldn’t make a sequel until something is done about police brutality. “I don’t think we’ll make another ’til they stop smoking Black dudes. You know? Until they fix the police brutality,” he said. “I personally don’t want to make another one because I feel like I would be betraying my people.” Yeah, it doesn’t seem like a Let’s Be Cops, Again is happening any time soon.
After seven films in a decade, the Police Academy movies quietly ended, using their final Mission To Moscow as a period on the short-lived sensation. Audiences had moved on from Cadet Mahoney’s shoe polish-based pranks. That’s not to say the powers that be haven’t threatened the return of Hightower and Tacklebox. No less than five years ago, Mahoney himself, Steve Guttenberg, claimed the series had escaped development hell, warning in 2021, “I suspect you haven’t seen the last of my Mahoney.”
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