CW president Mark “Pedowitz” Pedowitz knows what little girls want, and he believes it to be the exact same stuff girls have wanted over the past two decades: In addition to the network’s continuations of 90210 and Sex And The City, The CW is now mounting a remake of Beauty And The Beast, the late-’80s CBS fantasy-drama that played to every woman’s secret desire to be whisked away into the magical underworld of the New York sewer system, where she is then romanced by a guy who looks just like Ron Perlman, only slightly more leonine. According to TV Line, this new version will both modernize the story and add a “procedural twist,” though it’s not clear yet how that will differ significantly from the original’s basic formula, which saw Linda Hamilton’s district attorney character constantly stumbling into crimes that necessitated being rescued by the people who lived in the Tunnel world, who definitely didn’t have their own problems to worry about.
Perhaps this time, Catherine and Vincent will both be mismatched cops thrown together by circumstance—one a tough-cookie female investigator with something to prove, the other a guy who lives in the sewer and writes overwrought poetry. Whatever form it will take, The CW’s Beauty And The Beast apparently differs significantly enough from ABC’s own, more faithful Beauty And The Beast adaptation, which is also currently being developed, in accordance with the gypsy’s rule dictating that all dark fairy tale reboots have at least one competitor, otherwise all of our firstborns will die.
Of course, the big question: Will this new Beauty And The Beast inspire the same devotion that’s spawned so, so many YouTube tributes? So, so many.