Amazon Prime Original has picked up an eight-episode series based on the 1999 cult classic teen thriller film Cruel Intentions starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, Selma Blair and Ryan Phillippe, which is based on the classic French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons).
Sara Goodman and Phoebe Fisher, the writers and executive producers of the reboot (still set in Washington, D.C.), said in a statement: “We promise to make this next iteration as fun, irreverent, and boundary-pushing as the original, and are grateful to our partners at Original Film, Sony, and Amazon MGM Studios for trusting us to keep it Cruel.”
This isn’t the first attempt to produce a spin-off or sequel to Cruel Intentions. In 2015, NBC developed a Cruel Intentions series starring Gellar as an adult version of Kathryn Merteuil but the network eventually passed on the show.
In 2022, Gellar admitted that she was “grateful” the show never aired. Gellar said: “Nothing against NBC, but Cruel Intentions is straight streaming. On the first day, I was like, ‘This isn’t working.’ It’s just not a network show. And if it is a network show, it’s not my Cruel Intentions. So I was actually grateful.”
Eight years later and Gellar’s prediction or instinct about a Cruel Intentions reboot being “straight streaming” versus a network show, is spot on. Some might even say she slayed it.
