TV Land has cast the lead roles in its pilot about high school cliques and teenage angst that comes with a body count.
Greetings and salutations, are you a Heathers fan? If so, you may or may not take this well, so please sit down (and keep your bleach locked up): Heathers is becoming a TV show!
Yep, joining the long list of well-remembered films making the jump to small screen, the cult classic Heathers has a pilot order at TV Land that seeks to carry the devastatingly dark comedy about teen suicide, murder, and prom from its 1980s roots and into the 21st century. TV Land announced in March that they have ordered a pilot from writer Jason Micallef (Butter), and executive producers Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi of Lakeshore Entertainment. Described as the beginning of an anthology series, Heathers will find a modern day heroine dealing with a very different “but equally vicious” group of Heathers.
Now we know who will be the Heathers. As announced via Deadline, TV Land has found its main clique of passiive aggressive high school tyranny, with newcomer Melanie Field as Heather Chandler (the ruthless cruel leader of the pack in the original film); Brendan Scannell will be Heather Duke, the bulemic closet bookworm who was played by Shannen Doherty in the original film but has been rewritten here as a gender-flipped character; and Jasmine Matthew will play Heather McNamara, the easily suggestible cheerleader of the group.
Grace Victoria Fox (Under the Dome) will meanwhile play Veronica, who was the lead homicidal not-Heather in the film. It's also one of the early roles that made Winona Ryder a Gen X star. James Scully has also been cast in the part of JD, the smouldering mass murderer originated by Christian Slater in the film.
Heathers previously enjoyed an off-Broadway run as a rock musical in 2014 that similarly adapted the series about a girl and her bad news boyfriend deciding the best way to clean up their high school’s vapidity was by arranging “suicides” for its worst mean girls and bullies. But if TV Land wishes to transfer the appeal of the cult classic that starred a very young Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, they should recall the film’s own sage advice: if you want to fuck with the eagles, first you have to learn to fly.