Parking the Chevy: Jon Hamm To Continue The Franchise In ‘Confess, Fletch’ Opening In September
It’s been 40 years since he was last on the job, but Fletch is ready for his next assignment.
In Confess, Fletch, opening September 16th, the role of the comedic reporter originated by Chevy Chase in 1985 will be played by Jon Hamm.
In the film, the now former investigative reporter is living in Europe and writing about less dangerous subjects like art and travel when he is hired to find out who stole several million dollars worth of art from a count’s villa near Rome.
Fletch travels back to Boston to look into the case, only to discover a dead body in his Airbnb rental (imagine the cleaning charge!) Fletch now has to find the stolen art and clear his name for a murder charge.
Hamm will be reunited with his Mad Men co-star John Slattery, who portrays Fletcher’s Boston newspaper editor. The two have a similar “love-hate” relationship that Chase did with Richard Libertini’s character in the original film, as director Greg Mottola told Entertainment Weekly.
Mottola describes Fletch’s character as irreverent. “Fletch is a guy who’s usually the smartest person in the room,” he said. “Certainly, he’s a smartass.”
The cast also includes Kyle MacLachlan, Roy Wood Jr., Marcia Gay Harden, Lorenza Izzo, Ayden Mayeri, and Annie Mumolo. Chase will not appear in the film.
“The reason we didn’t ask Chevy Chase to be in it is not because we don’t love the original movies, we do, but we thought this should be a new thing,” Mottola explained. “There’s a lot of things Chevy did that aren’t in the Fletch books: his style of comedy, the slapstick, and all the different names and disguises. We thought it wouldn’t be right to steal them. We reference the original, we pay homage to it, but we tried to really balance it halfway between a detective mystery and a comedy, possibly more than the original.”
The sequel to the original has actually been in the works for 25 years: Kevin Smith signed on to write a third Fletch movie back in 1997. (Fletch Lives was released in 1989.) Miramax picked up the rights but after six years Smith still hadn’t gotten the movie made; Harvey Weinstein wanted Ben Affleck for the role but the actor passed. Even though other names were wish-listed for the project, like Brad Pitt and Ryan Reynolds, nothing ever came to be.
The film will be released in theaters, on digital, and on-demand on September 16th.