Television

'Heathers' TV Show Trailer: A Modern Reimagining Of An '80s Cult Classic

Heathers TV show trailer
By Jack Giroux

Heathers is the latest classic film title to get adapted into a television series. What was originally going to be a half-hour TV Land comedy series based on the 1988 cult classic was turned into an hour-long comedy for the Paramount Network, which will soon take the place of Spike TV. Like Fargo, Heathers is planned as an anthology series, with each season being conceived to follow a new group of Heathers.

Below, watch the Heathers TV show trailer.

Season 1 of the series features ten episodes and three new Heathers (Melanie Field, Brendan Scannell, and Jasmine Matthews). Victoria Cox (Under the Dome) and James Scully are playing Veronica Sawyer and JD, the two roles made famous by Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. Cox and Sully don't exactly have big shoes to fill since the Paramount Network series looks like it's going to to take some departures from Michael Lehmann's film.

Based on the trailer, there's a similar tone, but this is a 10-hour series, not a 100-minute movie, so presumably, we'll see different versions of Sawyer and JD who can easily stand on their own and step out from under the shadow of the original characters. Winks and nods to the original are expected, though, as the casting of one of the original Heathers, Shannon Doherty, confirms. Even the first look at the series features a callback to one of the movie's most famous lines.

The series was going to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and debut this fall, but Paramount Network decided to hold off until 2018 to release the series. They showed the first footage from Heathers last night during the MTV Video Music Awards, which is probably the exact audience Paramount Network wants to reach.

The pilot is written by Jason A. Micallef (Butter) and directed by someone who raises our hopes for the series: Leslye Headland. Headland was a writer on FX's Terriers, wrote the About Last Night remake, and wrote and directed the excellent romantic comedy, Sleeping With Other People, which is far more grounded in the real world than most romantic comedies we see. It's a great movie that's hard especially hard to turn away from when it's on cable.

The anthology series is called a "pitch-dark comedy," but I'm curious how dark it'll get. If the movie was released today, it's easy to imagine how some people would react to material that dark and tongue-in-cheek, especially as it relates to high school students. Without a sense of humor about its cruel, wicked self, the Paramount Network show probably wouldn't feel like Heathers – but the brief glimpse at the series suggests they're not sugarcoating this series.

Heathers debuts on the Paramount Network in 2018.

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