How Jon Hamm and Greg Mottola broke the Fletch curse: By saying 'f--- it'

Many people have tried, and failed, to revive the Fletch film franchise since Chevy Chase played the titular smartass journalist for the second and final time in 1989's Fletch Lives.

Way back in 1997, Kevin Smith fruitlessly pitched Universal, the studio behind Fletch and its sequel, on Son of Fletch, a third film featuring novelist Gregory McDonald's writer-hero. A few years later, McDonald's manager David List told Smith that Universal had allowed its option on the Fletch novels to lapse, and the filmmaker persuaded Miramax to buy the rights, planning to reboot the franchise with Jason Lee in the lead role. That too came to naught when Harvey Weinstein decided Lee wasn't a big enough star to carry the role. Over the next decade, a small army of directors, producers, writers, and actors circled the franchise, with Ben Affleck, Zach Braff, Dave Chappelle, Ryan Reynolds, and Joshua Jackson all being in the frame to play Fletch at one time or another.

"There's not an actor that's ever said anything funny that hasn't been talked about," List told EW in 2010. "One executive said, 'Why don't we write the role female and go to Ellen DeGeneres?"'

We'll probably never see DeGeneres as Fletch, but audiences can now catch Jon Hamm's take on the character in Confess, Fletch (out Friday), which is directed and co-written by Superbad's Greg Mottola.

Robert Clark/Miramax Jon Hamm in 'Confess, Fletch'

"Jon approached me and asked me if it wold interest me," Mottola tells EW of how he got involved in the film. "I knew of the books, I hadn't read them. I of course knew the movies. I love detective stories, it's one of my favorite genres. And I knew that Fletch was Gregory MacDonald's idea of a, at the time, modernized detective. And so I went and read a bunch of the books and loved them, and I really liked Confess, Fletch, which is the one Jon thought should be adapted."

Mottola knew that many people before them had tried to get a third Fletch movie made. "When Jon approached me about this, I did a little due diligence because I was aware, over the years, other people have attempted to revive Fletch," he says. "I was trying to think about what went wrong."

So how did he and Hamm succeed in overcoming the curse of Fletch?

"Our version [of the curse] was that basically Miramax said you have to do this on a budget that was a lot less than we thought we could do it for, which is just kind of the sign of the times," Mottola says. "And Jon and I were just like, 'F--- it, we're not going to let that stop us, we're going to follow this through as foolish as it might be. We're going to break the Fletch curse!"

Michael Kovac/Getty Images 'Confess, Fletch' director Greg Mottola and star Jon Hamm

Confess, Fletch finds the former investigative reporter living in Europe and writing about less dangerous subjects like art and travel when he's hired to find out who stole several million dollars' worth of art from a count's villa near Rome.

"Fletch comes to Boston to track down a bunch of stolen paintings, and the first day he's there, he discovers a dead body in the Airbnb he's staying in," Mottola explains. "The police think he's the murderer, so he has to simultaneously find the stolen art and clear his name."

Mottola is hopeful that audiences won't have to wait another 33 years for a fourth Fletch movie, and he has plans to adapt another of McDonald's novels, Fletch's Fortune, if Confess is well received.

"I would be thrilled if people like this enough that there's a desire to make another," he says. "Fletch's Fortune is about a journalism conference, and I would love to imagine that for the insane moment we live in now."

Related content:

• The curse of Fletch

• Jon Hamm steps into Chevy Chase's shoes in Confess, Fletch first look

• Mad Men stars Jon Hamm and John Slattery to reunite in Fletch reboot