Rough, tough and hard enough to rollerskate on (to use one of the show's lines), THE SWEENEY ran for four seasons on ITV in the mid-1970s, and was even successful enough to spawn two spinoff movies.

Now DNA Films, the U.K. venture backed by Fox Searchlight, has teamed up with cult writer-director Nick Love, his production outfit Vertigo Films and the show's original creator, Ian Kennedy Martin, to create a 21st-century version of THE SWEENEY for the bigscreen, reports Variety.

The movie is being developed to shoot next May.

The original "Sweeney," produced by Euston Films for Thames TV, starred John Thaw and Dennis Waterman as a veteran detective and his younger sidekick in the London police unit dedicated to fighting violent crime. Sweeney, short for Sweeney Todd, is cockney rhyming slang for the unit, which was known as the Flying Squad.