After suffering a stroke last week, legendary TV producer Aaron Spelling died last night; he was 83. Known primarily for his remarkably successful -- with audiences, if not critics -- escapist television shows, Spelling also produced a handful of movies over the course of his long career in Hollywood, including Soapdish and both Charlie's Angels films.

Spelling served in the Army during World War II, and after returning home eventually headed to Hollywood where he worked briefly as an actor, playing bit parts on TV and in films like Three Young Texans and Wyoming Renegades. Shortly thereafter he began writing for television. Hired by friend and mentor Dick Powell to write for Zane Grey Theater, Spelling eventually became a producer on the show and, in 1959, branched off on his own for the first time with the short-lived Johnny Ringo.

Spelling's greatest success came in the 1970s and 80s, when he produced series such as The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Starsky and Hutch, T.J. Hooker, Hart to Hart, Dynasty, and Charlie's Angels. That list amounts to about 5% of his total output, which runs to over 200 television shows and movies (including the much-loved The Boy in the Bubble); at one time, Spelling was personally responsible for fully 1/3 of ABC's prime time programming.

With the success of Starsky & Hutch, the drooling masses who turned up to ogle Jessica Simpson's Daisy Dukes-clad ass in The Dukes of Hazzard, and the imminent arrival of Miami Vice, it was pretty much inevitable that somebody would eventually decide that Magnum, P.I. would also be a cash cow. That somebody turned out to be both a wise suit at Universal, who have long held the rights, and Brian Grazer, who will be producing the film (through Imagine Entertainment). The screenplay will be written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who penned both Dodgeball and the brilliant Terry Tate, Office Linebacker short that was turned into possibly the best Super Bowl ad of all time.

As someone who loved Magnum as a kid and was shocked to discover as an adult that it's often well-acted and surprisingly well-written, I read this news with a bit of trepidation. Since the big screen version of TV shows that have been most successful have been incredibly campy (affectionate, I admit, but still campy), I was worried that the same approach would be taken with this adaptation. Somehow that just seems wrong, not to mention weirdly disrespectful of a pretty complex TV show. But then I got to the good part of the article: according to the Hollywood Reporter, the film will not be a "spoof but rather something akin to the tone of the show, which mixed humor and danger." Excellent. Now I'm officially not completely scared.