A Revenge of the Nerds reboot is coming, with Seth MacFarlane producing and the twin-brother comedy duo the Lucas Brothers co-writing and starring in the movie. According to Variety, Keith and Kenny Lucas will pen the film alongside Alex Rubens (Key and Peele, Rick and Morty), with Family Guy creator MacFarlane producing with Erica Huggins and Alana Kleiman. There is no word on whether or not a director has been tapped to helm the project.
The original Revenge of the Nerds starred Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards as the leaders of a group of misfits who just want to be taken seriously as a fraternity but find themselves being repeatedly tortured and pranked by the sports fraternity, the Alpha Betas. The movie was initially critically panned, but certainly found an audience, as it made around $40 million on a budget of around $8 million. The film’s take has since been projected to upwards of $60 million, with rental amounts factored in. Three more films were later made: Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation (1992), and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love (1994). The last two films in the franchise were made-for-TV movies.
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In recent years, the original film has been met with quite a bit of criticism over certain scenes. Specifically, one in which a sorority girl is tricked into sex with a masked individual whom she believes to be her boyfriend. In 2019, Revenge of the Nerds director Jeff Kanew, as well as writer Steve Zacharias, expressed regret over including this scene in the film. “In a way, it’s not excusable,” Kanew said, per GQ. “If it were my daughter, I probably wouldn’t like it.”
Due to the controversial nature of moments such as this, the new Revenge of the Nerds is not being considered a “remake.” This movie will be a franchise reboot and is said to be more of a commentary on modern nerd culture and what exactly it means to be a “nerd” in the 21st Century. Notably, 20th Century Fox previously greenlit a remake of the original movie, in 2006, with Adam Brody, Dan Byrd and Kristin Cavallari starring. However, the studio ended up shutting down the project only two weeks into production. It seems the studio is much keener on whatever MacFarlane and the Lucas Brothers have lined-up for the reboot.
