It’d be great if Hollywood left well enough alone, but because I’m not in charge and other people ostensibly are, a new Heathers anthology TV show is getting a pilot for TV Land.
According by The Hollywood Reporter, the show will be an anthology series, much like Fargo or the terminally bad American Horror Story, featuring a new group of “popular-yet-evil Heathers” every season. Directed by Leslye Headland, who also directed that movie I see on Netflix but skip every time, Sleeping With Other People, the pilot flips the original concept of Heathers on its head. Instead of the popular kids ruling the school as only deranged teens with delusions of grandeur and power can, the outcasts are the ones in charge.
The description of the characters sounds like this will resemble the original in name and basic format only. From THR:
Heather McNamara (originally played by Lisanne Falk) is a black lesbian; Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty) is a male who identifies as gender-queer whose real name is Heath; and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) has a body like Martha Dumptruck.
Headland was admittedly not familiar with the source material at first, but watched it in her twenties and immediately fell in love. ““I related with it so much,” she said to THR. “I can’t believe they got away with so much. The movie was a huge influence on an entire generation and it’ll be nice to introduce this to a new generation.”
This is the second attempt at rebooting Heathers for a contemporary audience. In 2012, Bravo floated the idea of a Heathers reboot featuring the Ashleys — a group of bitchy high school teens led by Winona Ryder’s character Veronica’s daughter. One could technically argue that Mean Girls can be seen as a slightly toothless reboot of Heathers, minus the murder. But, girls being mean in high school is a trope that has existed since time immemorial. Heathers, Mean Girls and every early 2000s teen high school comedy have featured some aspect of this trope, just rejiggered to mesh seamlessly with the zeitgeist.
Despite the fact that we really, really don’t need anymore reboots, TV Land will also be producing a pilot of a First Wives Club reboot starring Alyson Hanigan, Vanessa Lachey and Megan Hilty, which I will also watch the shit out of, guaranteed.
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
