Richard Roundtree played the title role, Detective John Shaft, in the original film, immediately reprising the role for two sequels: Shaft’s Big Score in 1972 and Shaft in Africa in 1973. Later in ’73, Roundtree played Shaft once again for a short-lived CBS television series.
The small screen Shaft ran for only seven episodes, but Roundtree returned more than two decades later for a cameo in John Singleton’s Shaft reboot.
Although Samuel L. Jackson played the lead in the 2000 release, the film actually maintained a singular continuity with the rest of the franchise, revealing that Jackson’s Detective John Shaft was actually the nephew of Roundtree’s.
According to Deadline, New Line Cinema’s Shaft reboot has scored a director who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about, and his name is Tim Story.