Looky here, cowpoke, there’s nothing wrong with a reboot ’round these parts. Unless, of course, you’re too yellow to take another shot at a role. At least that’s according to the once and future Rayland Givens, a.k.a. the cowboy-hat-wearing actor Timothy Olyphant. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Olyphant, a performer who has spent some time in the last decade retracing his boot-steps, says that there’s nothing wrong with a good reboot. In fact, he says, it’s not so different from a Broadway revival.
In the past decade, Olyphant has squeezed back into the cowboy hat for revivals of Justified and Deadwood. The actor claims that “every experience” he’s had “revisiting characters or working with the same people again” has been “gratifying.” Now that you mention it, he recommends it. And that’s before he’s even had the chance to take another crack at The First Wives Club’s Brett Artounian or Scream 2’s Mickey. Frankly, it’s surprising that that hasn’t happened yet, and we’re sorry/you’re welcome for putting that into the universe.
But Olyphant doesn’t have any problems with the prefix “re,” either. That is to say, he doesn’t see anything wrong with remakes or reboots because “everybody goes to Broadway to see the same couple of plays every few years,” and that’s the same thing. Frankly, it’s a little surprising that Olyphant would say such a thing when he knows damn well we have yet to see a revival of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Stranger still, Hollywood has foisted four separate Spider-Man series on audiences in the last two decades, and none of them (none!) have featured the Green Goblin’s “A Freak Like Me” number. But we digress, as Olyphant says, “It’s such a dumb, shallow argument to say Hollywood has no new ideas just because they’re rebooting things.”
It’s no wonder that Olyphant is saying this, considering he’s currently knee-deep in the promotional cycle for a refresh of the Alien franchise, Alien: Earth. He also recently leaked his return to Hollywood for David Fincher’s sequel to Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood. He’s “batting a thousand” when it reprising roles. Let’s hope he can keep his average up.
