Sony Pictures Television may resurrect “The Facts of Life.”
Sources have confirmed to Variety that Jessica Biel and Leonardo DiCaprio are both in talks with Sony to act as executive producers for the show with their respective production companies, Ocean Films and Appian Way. Sony Pictures Television owns distribution rights to the show, and is currently in early talks for launching a reboot. It currently does not have a network attached and a writer has not yet been selected.
The show premiered in 1979 as a spinoff of another popular sitcom, “Diff’rent Strokes.” It ran for nine seasons until 1988 on NBC, making it one of the longest-running television shows in the 1980s. The half-hour episodes revolved around Charlotte Rae’s character, Edna Garrett, as she becomes a housemother for an all-girls boarding school, Eastland School, in the southern tip of New York.
The show also starred Lisa Whelchel, Kim Fields, Mindy Cohn, and Nancy McKeon and earned three Emmy nominations.
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The reboot comes on the heels of the news of numerous classic television shows getting a reboot season. That includes “ALF,” which is in talks for a reboot from Warner Bros. TV, and Kelsey Grammer is reportedly meeting with writers and producers for a potential “Frasier” reboot.
