Ben Jones hated the movie version

In 2005, Warner Bros. released a movie that rebooted the franchise.

Starring Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville and Jessica Simpson, the film was met with a mixed reception, with some fans being unable to look past the original trio being recast. Someone who was particularly unhappy with the picture was Ben Jones, who played Cooter Davenport in the TV show.

Reflecting on the movie with Billy Rae Bates, he said: "I don’t know what they were thinking [with the film]. They totally missed the whole point of the show. Our show was sort of like a western, a 1940s western. The Old B westerns, the Roy Rogers ones, they weren’t realistic; they were fantasies; you could fall off a cliff and not hurt yourself. There were values and a good sense of right and wrong ... The reason people watched this show and encouraged their kids to watch it is it’s a good old-fashioned American show. These Duke boys are heroes; they risk their lives to do the right thing. If I hear it once, I hear it a thousand times a day, ‘Thank you for making a show that our kids can watch.’ You don’t take that audience and that show and do what they did to it."