Time to renew your search for the one-armed man. This afternoon, Quibi released its first teaser trailer for “The Fugitive,” its reboot of the famous film and television series of the same name. Quibi’s version of “The Fugitive” will star Kiefer Sutherland and Boyd Holbrook as the respective hunter and hunted. While previous reports have noted that they will not be playing Samuel Gerard and Richard Kimble, if this trailer is any indication, much of the rest of the format will remain the same.
READ MORE: Warner Bros. Makes Plans to Bring “The Fugitive” to the Big Screen
“The Fugitive,” which began as a 1963 ABC television series, is probably best known for its 1994 movie adaptation of the same name. Andrew Davis‘s thriller was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (an award that Tommy Lee Jones would ultimately win). If we count a forgettable television remake in 2000, the Quibi show marks the third adaptation of the original series. Call it the Goldilocks of adaptations: one for the big screen, one for the small screen, and one for the small-est screen of them all (your phone).
If you don’t know what Quibi is, you’re probably not alone. The Jeffrey Katzenberg-backed streaming platform is spending big money on a Super Bowl spot this weekend in the hope that it can help create awareness for its service. In a nutshell, Quibi is a streaming platform designed for short-form storytelling and portable screens. Each episode of a Quibi series will run between four and ten minutes, making a show like “The Fugitive” the perfect test for the format. What would never work as 12+ hours of content might work like gangbusters in six-minute bursts.
Maybe this won’t be a format for everyone, but with an impressive list of creatives ranging from Idris Elba to Ridley Scott to Zac Efron to Steven Soderbergh, odds are you will get sucked into at least one Quibi show before all is said and done.