Deadline revealed that CBS TV Studios is rebooting Clueless as an hour-long drama mystery series. And boy, did they have fun explaining this upcoming series.
Multiple streamers, as well as The CW, have expressed a strong interest in picking up the Clueless series. Jordan Reddout and Gus Hickey are writing the pilot, which Deadline calls “Mean Girls meets Riverdale meets a Lizzo music video”. If you’re not excited yet, they also describe it as “a baby pink and bisexual blue-tinted, tiny sunglasses-wearing, oat milk latté and Adderall-fueled look at what happens when the high school queen bee Cher disappears and her lifelong No. 2 Dionne steps into Cher’s vacant Air Jordans. How does Dionne deal with the pressures of being the new most popular girl in school, while also unraveling the mystery of what happened to her best friend, all in a setting that is uniquely 2020 L.A.?”
My god, that paragraph made my brain hurt. WTF is an oat milk latte? Is there a color now called bisexual blue? What has high school become?!
CBS TV Studios’ predecessor, Paramount Network Television, previously adapted Clueless for the small screen. The 1996 half-hour comedy series ran for three seasons, one on ABC and two on UPN.
Amy Heckerling wrote Clueless as a then-modern update of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma. It seems kind of strange for CBS TV Studios to now revamp Clueless with a mystery vibe for the modern day that will almost surely erase any parallels to Emma.
If Clueless manages to make it out of development hell, I can see The CW making an effort to grab it for its network. Over the last couple of years The CW has slowly been shifting away from the Arrowverse. They have been putting more programs back on its schedule that they were once known for, like Riverdale, Nancy Drew, Dynasty. Clueless would pair perfectly with any one of those shows.
Do you think Clueless needs to be updated for the modern day? Will it be weird to have the main focus not be on Cher? Let us know down in the comments!
