We’ve almost gotten used to the fact that every day brings news of another remake or reboot, whether it’s of a popular TV show (think Xena and forget about Coach), a comic-book movie, or just a really bad idea from Disney. After all, it’s when we insist on new ideas from Hollywood writers and studio execs that we end up with Maroon 5-centered nonsense and a show about a hashtag. So when Variety announced that NBC is developing a TV series based on Cruel Intentions, a 1999 film which was itself one of many adaptations of an 18th Century French play, we didn’t so much as collectively shrug.
But our remake ennui aside, NBC has made a “significant commitment” with its purchase of a script from the film’s director and writer, Roger Kumble. He’ll direct the pilot, which will be executive produced and written by Jordan Ross and Lindsey Rosin (she of the Squad Goals), who put on a Cruel Intentions musical together over the summer. The show will follow the machinations of a new group of spoiled, rich kids and their hangers-on, who now have a social-media arsenal with which to shame and plot against each other.
At the center of the story will be Bash Casey, the love child of Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe’s characters from the original film. Spurred on by the discovery of his late father’s journal—the one that revealed just how awful he and his sister (Sarah Michelle Gellar) were—the 16-year-old Kansas farm boy will move to San Francisco to attend a prestigious school. Which is exactly the kind of thing you’d have to do if you wanted to enter a “world of sex, money, power and corruption.” Based on what we’ve read, we might eventually learn that the cruelest intention of all is to name your kid Bash Casey.