Long Live Steve McQueen: Why the King of Cool Is Hot Again

Steve McQueen has been dead for 46 years, yet somehow he’s juggling one of the busiest development slates in town. At the moment, three of his signature movies are simultaneously being resurrected — one by another famous Steven, as in Spielberg — while a fourth project based on an ex-wife’s memoir continues to gestate as either a possible drama or documentary.

The one closest to arriving on screens is Michael B. Jordan’s remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, McQueen’s 1968 thriller about a bored millionaire who commits elaborate crimes for kicks. Jordan, who’s directing and starring in the reboot — the second, since Pierce Brosnan played the part in a 1999 version — finished shooting last year and is now in the editing bay prepping for a March release.

Meanwhile, Adolescence director Philip Barantini is attached to a Netflix remake of The Getaway, the 1972 Sam Peckinpah bank robbery drama on which McQueen met future wife Ali MacGraw. No cast has been announced. And at Amblin, Spielberg is developing a movie based on McQueen’s character in the 1968 cop drama Bullitt — not a remake so much as a new storyline about the San Francisco detective. Bradley Cooper is said to be attached to star.

So what explains the sudden McQueen resurgence? Neile McQueen, the actor’s 94-year-old first wife — and author of My Husband, My Friend, a memoir that’s been kicking around Hollywood for nearly 20 years, both as a prospective doc and a scripted adaptation — believes the answer has something to do with his inimitable charisma. “He was a true original,” she says. “There was a toughness about him but a softness, too.”

One of McQueen’s grandkids, Chase McQueen, 31, offers a similar take. “My grandfather was the epitome of cool,” he says. “And cool never expires.”

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This story appeared in the Oct. 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.