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We’ve been dying for gossip surrounding the new Gossip Girl series since WarnerMedia first announced it was on the way. Slowly but surely we’re learning more and more about the the anticipated drama, which will stream on WarnerMedia’s new service, HBO Max. But you probably shouldn’t hold your breath that it will debut any time soon.
The series will follow a new group of glamorous prep school students dealing with all the scandals and controversies teens — or at least teens on TV — face. After WarnerMedia picked up the Gossip Girl series, news about the show was parceled out here and there, and we’ve been scouring the internet for every piece of scoop with a determination that would make Gossip Girl proud. So check out everything we know so far about HBO Max’s Gossip Girl series.
It will premiere in 2021. Unfortunately, the new take on Gossip Girl wasn’t one of the shows made available when HBO Max launched in May 2020. And as a result of production delays due to the coronavirus, fans will have to wait until 2021 to return to the Upper East Side. “They hadn’t even started production yet; they were in pre-production and ready to roll,” HBO Max content chief Kevin Reilly told Vulture. “Things that would have been really meaningful and high profile have gotten pushed back.”
It is technically a sequel series, not a reboot. Though the series is labeled as being a reboot, it’s really more of a sequel series, since it takes place in the same universe and timeline as the original CW show. “It is 12 years — I guess 13 years after the original. So we are in real-time from the original where we are in the show,” co-creator Josh Safran told fans at Vulture Festival.
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Gossip Girl won’t be a character this time. Though Serena (Blake Lively), Blair (Leighton Meester), and the gang had to contend with an omniscient gossip blogger exposing their secrets on the daily, the new generation will face a different problem. “We felt like there was something really interesting about this idea that we were all Gossip Girl now in our own way,” Josh Schwartz told a group of reporters at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. “We were all kind of purveyors of our own social media surveillance state, and how that’s evolved and how that has morphed and mutated, and telling that story through a new generation of Upper East Side high school kids felt like the right time.”
Kristen Bell will return. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Bell would return for the new series, reprising her role as the all-knowing disembodied voice of the Gossip Girl blog, who narrated the previous series.
“[The producers] just said, ‘We’ve got really good news. It’s looking like we’re going to do another version of Gossip Girl and we would love for you to return,'” Bell told Variety. “I was thrilled because … it was a very easy job for me. I got to come in and play around. … It’s so much fun to watch. It’s beautiful. It’s silly. It’s dramatic. I’m excited that they’re revamping it because it’s just fun entertainment.”
Kristen Bell, The Good Place
As for other original characters returning … maybe? Though no previous cast members have signed on for the new series, Schwartz hasn’t ruled out a cameo or guest star arc for them yet. “If they want to be involved in some way, we’ve reached out to a lot them to let them know it was happening and that we would love for them to be involved if they want to be involved,” he said at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. “They played those characters for six years, and if they felt like they were good with that we wanted to respect that. But obviously any time anybody wants, it would be great to see them again.”
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The new cast is being assembled. Code Black‘s Emily Alyn Lind will star as Audrey, who’s in a long-term relationship but questioning if there is someone else for her. Eli Brown, Tavi Gevinson, Thomas Doherty, Adam Chanler-Berat, Zion Moreno, Whitney Peak, Jonathan Fernandez, Jason Gotay, and Jordan Alexander have also joined the cast in undisclosed roles.
It will be set at Constance Billard School for Girls. Like the original series, the female characters of the Gossip Girl reboot will attend Constance prep school, and the male characters will attend its brother school, St. Jude’s.
The new take will be more diverse. One of the major complaints about Gossip Girl back in the day was the lack of diversity the show depicted, from sexual orientation to skin color. That won’t be the case this time, though, Safran said. “There was not a lot of representation the first time around on the show. … I was the only gay writer, I think, the entire time I was there. Even when I went to private school in New York in the ’90s, the school didn’t necessarily reflect what was on Gossip Girl. So, this time around the leads are nonwhite. There’s a lot of queer content on this show. It is very much dealing with the way the world looks now, where wealth and privilege come from, and how you handle that. The thing I can’t say is there is a twist, and that all relates to the twist.”
The first season will be 10 episodes. When WarnerMedia picked up the Gossip Girl show, it ordered a 10-episode first season. That means we’ll get approximately 10 hours of juicy drama, hookups, breakups, and betrayals whenever the show hits HBO Max.
The original Gossip Girl is currently available to stream on Netflix.
Blake Lively and Penn Badgley, Gossip Girl
Source : TVGuide
