We can already hear the Internet getting ready to squeak with indignation and spit bile at Hollywood and everything it stands for, but Variety is reporting that Sony Pictures TV and Lakeshore Entertainment is planning to make a TV series based on the 1989 cult classic Heathers.
The original film saw Veronica (Winona Ryder) navigating the social cliques of high school, and most particularly trying to deal with the bitchy, manipulative but popular group – led by three girls called Heather. However she then meets the new guy at school, the rebellious JD (Slater), and not soon afterwards the Heathers and their ilk start dying, with Veronica and JD try to cover up the deaths by making them look like suicides.
Although shows like Gossip Girl have upped the suggestiveness and raunch permitted in teen programmes in the US, it’s still difficult to imagine them making a weekly series that keeps the dark comedy of Heathers – after all, the film ends with what amounts to an attempted school massacre, which probably wouldn’t go down too well on television. Unsurprisingly then, the people behing this TV do-over as still mulling over ideas of exactly how they might do it, although they are planning to keep the main characters from the first film.
This would also seem to hit over the head the idea of a Heathers big screen sequel, which Winona Ryder likes to talk up when she’s trying to remind people who she is and that she might still be vaguely relevent. According to Lakeshore Entertainment, which owns the rights to Heathers, “We had the title, and talked about doing a film remake at times. But doing it for TV seemed like a fresh and original idea.”
At the moment the whole project is purely at the script stage for the Fox Network, so before you get so angry about this that you decide to go on your own JD style rampage, there’s still a long way to go before this gets onto TV, as Fox haven’t even commissioned a pilot episode yet.
If they do it right, Heathers could make a great series, but going by American TV’s track record, you’ve got to worry that if it does end up getting made it’ll just be a anaemic rip-off that simply won’t have the guts to deal with the issues that Heathers so successfully skewered.