New Happy Trails for Roy, Dale

By Louise Barile

Thursday March 28, 2002 03:33 PM EST

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Husband and wife team Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, who starred in 88 feature films and a TV series that ran from 1952 to 1957, are about to make a comeback, reports Variety. The late couple's son, Roy "Dusty" Rogers Jr., has signed an agreement with producers Lawrence Bender and Kevin Brown to allow actors to play the famous couple in a series of family-oriented television programs and films, the trade paper reports. Early plans include a biopic and a television special featuring contemporary country singers performing such Rogers and Evans chestnuts as "Happy Trails," which was written by Evans. Not all the vehicles for the country couple will be nostalgic, however. "We're not going back to the Old West, but we will incorporate the values and morals that Roy and Dale were known for, and though we began negotiating this long before Sept. 11, there seems to be an appetite for that kind of thing," said Brown in an interview with Variety. "These will be contemporary, hip tales. We've already been offered an opportunity to do an animated series, and we intend to explore every way to depict the characters without violating what they meant to everybody." Happy trails, indeed.