Casting a Hogan's Heroes movie

[John_Lazarus]

The original creators of Hogan’s Heroes won back their rights to the show back in March 2013. They say they plan to make a movie.

Inspired by the other thread re-casting Gilligan’s Island, here’s a thought experiment:

Who would you cast in the movie?

Here are the characters, and a few names that just popped into my head, sometimes making for a bizarre selection:

Col Hogan - no idea here yet, but I read Mel Gibson was originally tapped to do this back in the late 90s or early 00s. Otherwise: How about Jim Caviezel? or Christian Bale? or maybe… Robert Downey Jr?
SSgt “Kinch” Kinchloe - Will Smith, or is that too obv?
T/Sgt Carter - Owen Wilson, lazy, easy-going, bit of a drawl
Cpl LeBeau - ?
Cpl Newkirk - don’t know why, first face popped in my head was David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor).

• The Germans
  Col Klink - altho’ he’s not German, why not John Lithgow? He does pompous very well.
  Sgt Schulz - John Goodman, maybe. Yeah, yeah, not very imaginative, but I think he’s very good at playing world-weary.
  Gen Burkhalter (Army) - ?
  Maj Hochstetter (Gestapo)- This is where go a wee bit outside the box: Christopher Walken.

And to go waaaaay outside the box to maybe a more serious and darker HH: Willem Dafoe as Hochstetter.

Any ideas out there?

 

[PaulfromIowa]

You see the obvious problem. Nobody can compare to the original cast. Only poor imitations.

 

[Djames581]

Ok now we can see again Hogan’s Heroes movie…

 

[DaveBj]

You see the obvious problem. Nobody can compare to the original cast. Only poor imitations.

This.

(The line that I use at work when someone asks me something that I don’t know and really am not required to know anything about is right from Sgt. Schultz – “I know NOSSINK!!!”)

 

[Son_of_Niall]

Col Hogan - Johnny Depp or Robert Downey Jr.
SSgt “Kinch” Kinchloe - Perhaps an older black actor who could act as a kind of ‘straight man’.
T/Sgt Carter - Hugh Laurie, but he’s too old now.
Cpl LeBeau - Rowan Atkinson
Cpl Newkirk - Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who)

The Germans
Col Klink - John Cleese.
Sgt Schulz - I agree, John Goodman.
Gen Burkhalter (Army) - Stephen Fry (anti-Catholic that he is).
Maj Hochstetter (Gestapo)- Richard Gibson, who played the Gestapo agent Herr Flick in the Britcom Allo Allo.

 

[Son_of_Niall]

Since the series ended with no resolution, I always thought they could do a sequel taking place about ten years after the war.
How about this premise?
Hogan, now a Hollywood agent, is recruited by the CIA to re-gather his heroes and go behind the Iron Curtain to rescue “Nimrod”, the famous but unidentified German double agent referred to in the series.
But who was Nimrod?
Klink? Now a bank teller.
Schulz? Owner of the largest toy company in East Germany.
Burkhalter? Restaurant owner.
Hochstetter? Local gangster.
Or Helga? East German movie star.

 

[John_Lazarus]

Since the series ended with no resolution, I always thought they could do a sequel taking place about ten years after the war.
How about this premise?
Hogan, now a Hollywood agent, is recruited by the CIA to re-gather his heroes and go behind the Iron Curtain to rescue “Nimrod”, the famous but unidentified German double agent referred to in the series.
But who was Nimrod?
Klink? Now a bank teller.
Schulz? Owner of the largest toy company in East Germany.
Burkhalter? Restaurant owner.
Hochstetter? Local gangster.
Or Helga? East German movie star.

Cool idea!

 

[Son_of_Niall]

Cool idea!

My money was always on Burkhalter being Nimrod.

I always felt any re-make should be done by the Brits, they’re not as oversensitive about ethnic humor as we are in the states. And a dark, off the wall humor is what a re-boot would need.

 

[JustaServant]

In a sense, the D-Day episode they did could be seen as a finale. The war was over for the Germans in less than a year. And if, as it was implied, the Stalag was close to the French border, they would have had to evacuate the camp not too soon after. Basically Klink would wake up one day to an empty camp.
But HH was done, like so many shows even today, as a formula. The Fugitive was the first show that had a finale. It never seemed to be a priority in shows before that. So Gilligan is still on the Island, and the Robinsons are still Lost in Space.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

So Gilligan is still on the Island, and the Robinsons are still Lost in Space.

You’re right, but there were three Gilligan’s Island TV movies which gave some kind of finality. The first was when they got rescued and realized that other people and civilization aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Then in the second one they are discovered, and they decide to run a resort there. That one felt like a failed pilot. The last one was, of course, when the fate of the island was determined by a basketball game between The Harlem Globetrotters and a team of robots.

 

[JustaServant]

You’re right, but there were three Gilligan’s Island TV movies which gave some kind of finality. The first was when they got rescued and realized that other people and civilization aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Then in the second one they are discovered, and they decide to run a resort there. That one felt like a failed pilot. The last one was, of course, when the fate of the island was determined by a basketball game between The Harlem Globetrotters and a team of robots.

Never got into Gilligan. I did love Lost in Space as a kid.
Remakes are fine sometimes, but many of these old shows were products of thier time and should be viewed in that context. HH was great in the 60s when the war was only 20-25 years in the past. But we have a different audience now, 70 years after the war. Today’s audience wouldn’t get it.