Bad News, People In 1988: Bravo Isn’t Making A ‘Heathers’ TV Series

Forgive me if I seem a little more clueless than usual, but I’m a little shocked right now by the idea that Bravo is actually trying to develop scripted series now, as opposed to carting out another gaggle of awful women and branding them as the next big city’s Real Housewives. Alas, this news is true, and Bravo recently ordered a pilot for Marti Nixon’s Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, which was originally developed as original programming for Showtime.

But the bigger news – at least to people who love to answer the question, “Hey, remember the 80s?” – is that Bravo decided to pass on a TV series based on the 1988 dark comedy, Heathers, which starred Winona Ryder and Christian Slater as one truly f*cked up high school couple. According to BuzzFeed, the show would have actually been a sequel, but instead Bravo fed it a cup of liquid drainer.

The project was announced last September. It had originally been developed in 2009 by Sony Pictures Television for Fox, with Jenny Bicks (Sex and the City, Men in Trees, The Big C) as its executive producer. Veronica, played in the earth-shattering 1989 movie by Winona Ryder, would move back to Sherwood with a teenage daughter who would have to face the Ashleys, daughters of the Heathers who had survived the movie.

Heathers was a great movie, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure that it’s the kind of story that needs to be resurrected in 2013, with its very graphic themes of suicide and murder, and especially with Slater’s character’s ultimate desire to pull off a “mass suicide” that actually had him plotting to blow up the entire school.

Maybe I’m just a prude, but I can’t see too many of the parental control and family groups thinking that this would be a good idea. Either way, I don’t want fans of the film to give up hope, but maybe don’t go fixing yourselves up in the holy water just yet.

(GIFs via here and here)

×