Jon Hamm's Time As Fletch Is Done, and Director Greg Mottola Is 'Depressed About It'

By Andrew Sanford | Film | August 8, 2024 |

By Andrew Sanford | Film | August 8, 2024 |

Hollywood has always clamored for IP (intellectual property). Why come up with an original idea when you can take something that already works and present it a little differently? This attitude has produced some incredible films over the years! Movies like The Wizard Of Oz, The Exorcist, and The Silence Of The Lambs are all based on pre-existing material. They are also, debatably, perfect films (cultural/social ignorance notwithstanding). For a long time, Hollywood made adaptations while also bolstering original works. That changed in 2008.

2008 saw the release of two films that would change the trajectory of the movie business as we know it. Comic book films Iron Man and The Dark Knight were massive successes. Their critical and financial standings fired dollar signs into the eyes of hungry executives. What has followed is a less diverse lineup of wide-released films, ever-moving financial goalposts, and budgets that would make an accountant do a quadruple take. Smaller movies, even those based on IP, don’t get the theatrical rollout they used to.

Theatrical releases were affected even more by COVID. I don’t need to get into the details, but let’s say that, for a while, I was convinced I may never get to see a movie in a theater again. With little access to theaters and streaming models that aren’t close to being perfect, it can be harder for films to move the needle. That makes it even more impressive when films do make an impact. Confess, Fletch was one of those films.

Starring Jon Hamm as the eponymous Fletch, the film was based on the 1976 mystery novel of the same name. It follows journalist Irwin Fletcher as he attempts to retrieve stolen paintings. He gets wrapped up in a murder mystery and attempts to clear his name. The movie, directed by Greg Mottola, has a dynamite cast, solid laughs, and only received a limited theatrical release. Despite a lot going against the film, it was a hit with critics and audiences (who saw it).

The internet is not real life. That is something people need to remind themselves. Still, when something is enough of a hit that you begin seeing disparate corners of the internet praising it, notice should be taken. That was the case with Confess, Fletch. People who saw it were impressed enough that its lack of attention was lamented across the World Wide Web. Still, those fans were given hope when Mottola announced he was hired to write a sequel. Now, those hopes are being dashed.

Mottola has taken to social media to reveal that the sequel is officially dead. “The new head of Miramax, who controls the rights to all the books, shot down my sequel project. The Fletch curse got me,” Mottola explained, citing the difficulty of getting a Fletch film made in the decades since Chevy Chase played the character. “The gatekeepers don’t see it, but I tried […] Feature comedy is having a rough time. I was okay with the idea of it probably being a streaming movie, but I was only going to do it my way.”

It sounds like Mottola was given a classic studio runaround with a COVID chaser. “I was told ‘the first one lost money’ — as if there had been any attempt to make money,” Mottola continued. “Jon [Hamm] was very into the new script. I’ve been rather depressed about it, but hard to expect a good break in the feature world these days.” Too bad Confess, Fletch only cost $20 million to make. If it didn’t meet box office expectations but still had a $200 million budget to be pilfered by executives during production. we’d probably have a third already in production.