A classic series for young readers gets a Canadian update, with a Dartmouth-raised actor as one of the leads, as a new live-action version of The Hardy Boys goes into production in Ontario.
James Tupper, seen most recently with Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman in HBO’s Big Little Lies, will play detective Fenton Hardy to his sleuthing sons Frank (Mech-X4’s Rohan Campbell) and Joe (Alexander Elliot from Detention Adventure). The series of 13 episodes based on the bestselling children’s mystery books will shoot in Toronto and Hamilton until January, and premieres later in 2020 on YTV in Canada and streaming platform Hulu in the U.S.
In this new version, Fenton Hardy investigates the mysterious death of his wife Laura, and their songs Frank and Joe follow leads of their own while staying with their aunt in their mother’s hometown of Bridgeport for the summer.
“While we’re excited to bring a fresh new take on The Hardy Boys, we also wanted to evoke a sense of nostalgia. The series remains true to the quintessential Hardy Boys themes of brotherly love, friendship, and of course, mystery solving,” said Joan Lambur, executive producer and president of Lambur Productions, which is partnering with seasoned Canadian company Nelvana to create this series.
The Hardy Boys books debuted in 1927, created by publisher Edward Stratemeyer and credited to the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon but written by several different authors, including Canadian Leslie McFarlane. Over the years it’s been adapted into a Disney TV series in the 1950s, an animated cartoon series in the late ’60s and the combined Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries series in the 1970s.
