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Hey Upper East Siders, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite is back. WarnerMedia announced a straight-to-series order for a Gossip Girl spinoff series on its newly named streaming service, HBO Max.
Rumors of a Gossip Girl reunion have been circulating for a while, but this new series won’t focus on the adventures of Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf. The offshoot is set eight years after the original show’s finale and will follow a new generation of New York private school teens who are introduced to the social surveillance of the Gossip Girl site. The show will explore how much social media and the landscape of New York itself has changed in the intervening years.
The original Gossip Girl, which ended in 2012 after six seasons on the CW, was based on the YA novel series written by Cecily von Ziegesar and centered around the antics of a group of teens from the Manhattan elite. The combination of fashion and drama on the Upper East Side made the show one of the most popular on TV at the time. The show was headlined by a star-making central turn from Blake Lively, and featured a collection of other teen heartthrobs including Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, Chace Crawford, Ed Westwick and Taylor Momsen. There is as yet no word on whether any of the original cast members will be returning for the new show.
HBO Max’s order is for 10 one-hour episodes, with book series producer Alloy Entertainment on board in collaboration with Fake Empire, Warner Bros. Television and CBS Television Studios, both of whom produced the original series.
The new series will also reunite a bunch of executive producers from the original, including Joshua Safran, Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, Leslie Morgenstein. Gina Girolamo will executive produce for Alloy, and Lis Rowinski will serve as a co-EP on behalf of Fake Empire.
WarnerMedia announced the name for their new service, launching in the spring of 2020, earlier this month along with the news that HBO Max will be the home of Friends starting next year. The new streaming service will also house new Warner Bros.-produced dramas for The CW starting with the fall 2019 season, including the DC Entertainment series Batwoman and Riverdale spinoff Katy Keene. CW shows going forward will be available on HBO Max beginning 30 days prior to the TV premiere of the next seasons of those shows.
The media giant still hasn’t announced pricing for the service, which will compete with Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus, among others.
Overall, HBO Max will combine content from HBO with a slate of originals and programming from Warner Bros., New Line, DC Entertainment, CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, The CW, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Crunchyroll, Rooster Teeth, and Looney Tunes.
