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US to conjure up all-new Bewitched

Hope it's better than that Nicole Kidman flick....

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2014-10-17_0039Well I hope it’s better than that Nicole Kidman flick….

Sony Pictures TV is shopping a new version of Bewitched, penned by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (The Vow), Deadline reports.

The Elizabeth Montgomery series, which ran from 1964 to 1972, recently marked 50 years since its debut.

Multiple networks are said to be interested on a modern-day take of the hit series. But can it ever improve on the original cast? Nope.

The project hails from Lucy Fisher and Douglas Wick’s Red Wagon Entertainment, which produced the 2005 film starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell.

Uh oh.

16 Responses

  1. Will Ferrell was what ruined the movie version for me … totally wrong choice! Don’t think they could ever remake I Dream Of Jeannie because she could not call him “Master” … not politically correct. 🙂

    Seriously, US TV has a major lack of imagination and creativity at the moment … this obsession with remaking shows from 50 years ago is just embarrassing! As is yet another version of CSI and all that same-same stuff.

    Also, so many UK shows that they insist on Americanising … thank god we still have creativity in the UK and Europe … and Canada! 🙂

  5. I did not care for the movie…at all..just me….but I am also not a fan of Will Ferrell…and the new TV series if from the same people…do not hold much hope for it.

  6. Why not leave the original Bewitched alone and maybe follow on? Flash forward to the 80s with Tabitha as a young mother dealing with the same kind of witch v mortal issues, or one set in the present day with Tabitha’s children around Samantha’s age when the original began? They could lift so many storylines from the original to update into modern day, without having to compete with re-creating the original ensemble of characters.

  7. As for this remake, I wonder if they’ll be brave enough to put in social commentary as well like the original did. Like there was an episode where Aunt Clara brought Benjamin Franklin to the present day (60’s) and he was not happy with people being stopped from protesting.

    There was an episode where an African American child answered the door and one of Darrin’s clients was at that door and cancelled his account with McMann and Tate because he thought Darrin was married to an African American woman. Which saw even Larry Tate glad to see the back of him when he find out his objections to Darrin handling the account.

    Would they do stuff like that now, for instance have a friend of the families (or a parent from Tabitha’s school), who happens to be Islamic and wearing a hijab or shayla with similar results. As if they cannot do that sort of stuff in the context of Bewitched,…

  8. @BrookeP – I quite liked the movie as well, though I was a bit disappointed in the ending. I thought the train of thought running through it of how Jack Wyatt wanted to turn the show into more about Darrin was good. Then they sort of veered away from that, the way it was heading I thought they’d play on the realisation that the reason an old show worked was because the formula was right and you shouldn’t mess with that formula.

    I was thinking on first watch the film was heading to a meta type dig at Hollywood for doing remakes and not sticking to what made that show/film/play great in the first place and putting a new twist on it instead. So the disappointment in the end story was of my own making and I have watched since and enjoyed it for what it is and how it makes some of the characters real (like Endora etc).

  14. “But can it ever improve on the original cast? Nope.”

    Oh, I dunno. Think “let’s transplant the cast of Mad Men” – Elisabeth Moss as Samantha, Jon Hamm as Darren, and John Slattery as Larry – and tell me that wouldn’t at least match the originals! 😉

    (You could probably adapt half the scripts, too, and replace Jon Hamm with Vincent Kartheiser half way through…)

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