'Dallas' does a movie

The already larger-than-life Ewings of "Dallas" will be supersized to the big screen via a multimillion-dollar deal sanctioned by series creator David Jacobs.

He envisions a grand-scale feature film with a new cast and more substantive roles for the series' often underfoot women. "Dallas," which ran from 1978 to 1991 on CBS, made the city an international tourist mecca and a symbol of high-handed lust and greed epitomized by Larry Hagman's portrayal of oily J.R. Ewing.

The show's "Who Shot J.R.?" episode, telecast Nov. 21, 1980, is still the second highest-rated program in TV history, behind only the farewell "M.A.S.H." movie.

"In some ways, 'Dallas' has to be upscaled," Jacobs said Thursday. "Then, we were dealing with the oil business, and now we're dealing with the energy business. But it's not as if we're going to do an Enron story. The characters have to stay essentially the same, but the people who play them have to be different." Tentatively scheduled for a 2004 release, the "Dallas" movie "absolutely" will be shot in Dallas -- "I don't see how it can't be," Jacobs said.

The film is being bankrolled by Regency Enterprises, a production company based at 20th Century Fox. Finding the right actor to play villainous J.R. will be the biggest casting hurdle, Jacobs said.

"Every actor 40 to 50 years old has been mentioned. From John Travolta to George Clooney to Harrison Ford, who I guess would be too old.

Kevin Costner has been mentioned by more than a few people. The scale is bigger and the stakes are bigger.

"So you've got to have someone with great humor, a really gutsy actor like Hagman just playing the hell out of the part." Jacobs said he won't write the script for the movie but expects to have considerable input. He'd "love to see more than just cameos in the movie by Larry Hagman and some of the others." And he wants a makeover of J.R.'s mother, "Miss Ellie" Ewing, played by Barbara Bel Geddes in the series.

"She should be a figure of more potency," Jacobs said. "One of the things I'm looking forward to doing is punching up Miss Ellie, because I think she had a lot of untapped potential."

Former No. 1

"Dallas," prime time's No. 1-rated entertainment series from 1980 to 1984, was meant to be a straight-ahead drama, even if many fans came to see it as a lark.

"Part of the pleasure of watching 'Dallas' was seeing people that rich being that miserable," Jacobs said. "It was fun, but it was never a send-up. And I don't think the movie can be a send-up. It's not going to be 'The Godfather,' but I don't think it's going to be 'Charlie's Angels' either."