Modern Problems

MGM's big-screen update of the hit 1968-73 TV show The Mod Squad has just, like, hit a snag, man. The film's director, Stacy Title (The Last Supper), recently dropped out because ''I had a much darker idea of what the movie should be,'' she says. ''They're going to make a PG-13 movie. If you're going to make an undercover-cop movie that's not a parody or a '70s send-up, it has to be gritty, and they wanted to go lighter.'' Her replacement — curiously — is Scott Silver, noted for Johns, last year's dark little indie about male prostitution. MGM, which had no comment, plans to release the movie in 1998.

FURTHERMORE Speaking of TV-based movies: Universal's Leave It to Beaver opens Aug. 22.... The Avengers, starring Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, and Sean Connery, wraps next month.... Warner Bros. has tapped Will Smith and George Clooney for its big-screen version of The Wild Wild West, scheduled to shoot next April, the same month that New Line plans to release its Lost in Space remake, starring Matt LeBlanc, Mimi Rogers, Gary Oldman, and William Hurt.... Columbia's I Dream of Jeannie movie is waiting to be blinked into production.... And the same studio is planning a Bewitched update, to be produced by that other '70s fave, Penny Marshall.

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