Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield are headed to the small screen—again.
The CW network is developing a television series based on Sweet Valley High, the popular series of books that were a mainstay of young readers in the 1980s and ’90s, Deadline reports.
The series will be executive produced by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the team responsible for the recent Gossip Girl reboot on the CW. Ashley Wigfield (Looking for Alaska, Runaways) is slated to write the screenplay for the series.
The Sweet Valley High books were launched in 1983 by Francine Pascal, who created the characters; the novels were written by ghostwriters. The books told the story of Jessica and Elizabeth, identical twins living in a Los Angeles suburb, and their family and friends.
The bestselling novels were adapted into a syndicated television series, Sweet Valley High, which aired from 1994 to 1997. A planned film adaptation of the books was announced in 2017, but the status of that project is unclear. In a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Pascal sounded skeptical that the film would be realized, saying, “I do want it to be done right. I would like it to be done. It’s so many years now that this has been going on, and it’s really a shame.”
Other executive producers on the new series, titled Sweet Valley, include Wigfield, Lis Rowinski (Nancy Drew), Peter Chernin (Truth Be Told), and Jenno Topping (See). There’s no word yet on possible shooting dates or an air date for the series.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
