Hockey movies have had several periods of popularity, though the movies themselves have been of dubious merit overall. 

And, now the remake of the classic Slap Shot is slogging along. 

The script has been finished, based on the original insights of Nancy Dowd, sister of an American Hockey League player who took her brother’s dinner table anecdotes and wove them into a hilarious romp in the 1970s.

The 1976 movie came at hockey from different angles, inspiring arguably the most popular of the sports films that combined action, comedy, and violence.

Slap Shot was years ahead of its imitators, but it was a product of its era, down to the leather leisure suits worn by Paul Newman as the player/coach and the politically incorrect sexual innuendo that dominated the locker room antics with toothless blue-collar skaters.

Peter Steinfeld has a script ready for star approval (which means there shall be only two or three more re-writes). The production is scheduled to be ready for 2012, allowing ample time for all the pre-production details to change twice more.

Producers think most ticket-buyers were born 20 years after the original movie, and the rest of us are so old as to have entirely forgotten about Slap Shot, with its on-ice strip tease, the bespectacled Hanson Brothers and bad organ music played during the game.

How wrong they are! But, that hasn’t stopped producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall from warming up the Zamboni, ready to roll over a new generation.

Dean Parisot, who brought us Galaxy Quest a few years back, will direct and has been the moving force behind the picture coming back from the Canadian tundra to screens and all the other moneymaking ways to market a movie.

The logic has been that The Longest Yard was a success with Adam Sandler, and something akin to the formula for hockey is cash in the ATM.

No stars have given their public approval for acting in the picture yet, though Adam Sandler is a lock if he wants to play Paul Newman’s player-coach. Sandler has made a cottage industry out of taking on various sports for comic effect.

Another comedian named Jim Carrey was associated with the project several years ago, and he could still lace up the skates.

The stock-in-trade thugs like the Hanson Brothers can come out of central casting, though the actual brothers who made the film famous 40 years ago are still bashing each other, like aging stooges, at rinks and Canadian fairs.

The handsome leading player, once Michael Onkean, with a rump that did not melt in the final scene, could be re-cast with any of the cookie-cutter boy-men of movies today. Chace Crawford or Zac Efron comes to mind. We imagine some connoisseurs of hot buns are thinking Ryan Kwanten from True Blood (whose butt is already Internet tested and ready). 

Will Farrell is a possibility as the cross-dressing general manager of the lowly Charlestown Chiefs, who find success and popularity when they beat the crap out of opponents during the national anthem.

The story will, of course, be updated from the grungy small-time rinks of the 1970s. This version will be dumber and dumber still. Players will likely be tweeters.

We can hardly wait for the puck to be dropped.