Having already taken the worlds of film and theater by storm, Elle Woods—or her closest 2020s equivalent—is now set to hit TV. Variety reports that Prime Video has begun development on a TV spin-off of beloved 2001 legal comedy Legally Blonde. Elle herself, Reese Witherspoon, is set to executive produce the series, working with Gossip Girl creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who’ll also write the show.
The big question here, of course, is whether Witherspoon will show up in the series proper, or whether she’ll be content to just sort of hover over the whole thing benevolently, in a strictly producing capacity, like some sort of neon pink angel (with an executive producer credit). Schwartz and Savage will be down in the trenches, though; the duo are fresh off making just a metric ton of new TV lately, having most recently released 2023 mystery series City On Fire on Apple TV+.
Amazon picked up the rights to Legally Blonde a few years back, in the same MGM fire sale that also got them interested in shows “set in the universe of” Barbershop and Robocop. It’s not hard to see why Blonde might be the first to get any traction, though: Legally Blonde was a modest hit when it arrived in theaters in 2001, but has had an enduring legacy, up to and including a very lucrative run on Broadway. Doesn’t hurt that the story is timeless: Girl meets boy. Boy dumps girl. Girl executes complicated plan to attend the most prestigious law school in the country in order to win boy back, ultimately exonerating an accused murderer through her encyclopedic knowledge of hair treatments. Standard stuff!
We joke, but the upshot is that Legally Blonde is a pretty classic underdog story with a very particular and fun point of view, so it’s not hard to see it working again, now with Amazon money powering it on its way.