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Prison sports comedy film The Longest Yard is getting another remake, Deadline exclusively reported.
Paramount Pictures is reportedly remaking The Longest Yard, which was remade in 2005 with Adam Sandler. The 2005 movie was a remake of the Burt Reynolds film.
Gunpowder & Sky's Van Toffler and David Gale were executive producers in Sandler's version. The Longest Yard is Sandler's second football movie after 1998's The Waterboy.
The movie was based on a story by Al Ruddy about Paul “Wrecking” Crewe, a former star quarterback in prison at Citrus State. He recruits his fellow prisoners to form a football team named Mean Machine to play against the guards.
Burt Reynolds, Crewe in the original film, played the inmates' coach in the 2005 remake. Paramount released the 1974 and 2005 movies.
While The Longest Yard's story is fictional, the 1974 movie set was real. When the film crew packed up, they left behind the bleachers built for the movie as well as all the football equipment.
This is important because the movie was filmed at the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, the state's main maximum security facility. According to a 1988 Sports Illustrated article, the prison inmates challenged the guards to a game of football — just like the movies.
Warren Morris, himself a former Georgia State Prison inmate, coached the prisoners. He told the magazine that the guards “who couldn't play a lick” started cursing the prisoners before the game began.
“So we said, ‘Screw 'em. Let's kill 'em!'” he recounted. There were no recorded fatalities.
However, things got out of hand. The prisoners beat the guards 66-0. And they also beat them literally, which signaled the end of prison football in Georgia.
