NBC’s TV reboot/sequel to Cruel Intentions has found its Annette Hargrove, but unlike her co-star, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Kathryn Merteuil, Reese Witherspoon herself won’t be returning to reprise the role. Instead, The Hollywood Reporter says that Annette will be played by Drop Dead Diva’s Kate Levering. In the movie, Annette was an innocent high schooler who fell in love with Ryan Phillippe’s Sebastian Valmont, a wild rich kid who tried to save Annette from the Cruel Intentions of his sister (Kathryn) but ended up getting killed. The Cruel Intentions series will jump ahead 15 years, with Annette being a newly widowed mother who has to protect her son from “a world of sex, money, power, and corruption” after he finds out that his biological father was really Ryan Phillippe’s wild rich kid and not some boring midwesterner named Trevor. That’s when the son meets Gellar’s Kathryn, who apparently still gets her laughs from ruining people’s lives with her Cruel Intentions.
NBC’s Cruel Intentions pilot—which comes from original writer/director Roger Kumble—has a penalty attached, which means the network will have to pay if it doesn’t air. Basically, if it doesn’t make it to TV, it was probably terrible.