WarnerMedia announced earlier this year that a Gossip Girl reboot was on the agenda, and it would debut on its new streaming service, HBO Max, set to launch in May 2020. Since then, news about the upcoming series has been parceled out here and there, but most details have been kept strictly under wraps. Any and all information can be found right here though, with TV Guide’s trusted Everything To Know guide to the upcoming reboot.
Check out all the current spoilers for the show below, from casting to the premise to possible cameos:
It is technically a sequel series, not a full reboot. Though the new series will “reboot” the original show’s premise of Upper East Side kids in prep school dealing with the gossip and scandal that come with being rich and glamorous, the new series will take place in the same timeline as the original. Executive producer Josh Safran told fans at Vulture Festival: “It is 12 years — I guess 13 years after the original. So we are in real-time from the original where we are in the show.”
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The 10-episode first season will air on HBO Max. When the news of the pickup broke, WarnerMedia announced that it had ordered a 10-episode first season, which will air exclusively on its new streaming service, HBO Max.
Gossip Girl won’t be a character this time. Though Serena (Blake Lively), Blair (Leighton Meester), Dan (Penn Badgley) and the gang had to contend with an omniscient gossip blogger exposing their secrets on the daily, the new generation will face a different problem. “We felt like there was something really interesting about this idea that we were all Gossip Girl now in our own way,” co-creator Josh Schwartz told a small group of reporters at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. “We were all kind of purveyors of our own social media surveillance state, and how that’s evolved and how that has morphed and mutated, and telling that story through a new generation of Upper East Side high school kids felt like the right time.”
Kristen Bell will return though. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Bell would return for the new series, reprising her role as the all-knowing disembodied voice of the Gossip Girl blog, who narrated the previous series.
“[The producers] just said, ‘We’ve got really good news. It’s looking like we’re going to do another version of Gossip Girl and we would love for you to return,'” Bell told Varietywhile promoting Frozen II. “I was thrilled because… it was a very easy job for me. I got to come in and play around… It’s so much fun to watch. It’s beautiful. It’s silly. It’s dramatic. I’m excited that they’re revamping it because it’s just fun entertainment.”
Kristen Bell, The Good PlacePhoto: NBC, Colleen Hayes/NBC
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As for other original characters… maybe? Though no previous cast members have signed on for the new series, Schwartz hasn’t ruled out a cameo or guest star arc for them yet. “If they want to be involved in some way, we’ve reached out to a lot them to let them know it was happening and that we would love for them to be involved if they want to be involved,” he said at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. “They played those characters for six years, and if they felt like they were good with that we wanted to respect that, but obviously any time anybody wants, it would be great to see them again.”
It will be set at Constance Billard School for Girls. Like the original, the female characters of the Gossip Girl reboot will attend Constance prep school, and the male characters will attend its brother school, St. Jude’s.
The reboot will be more diverse. One of the major complaints about Gossip Girl back in the day was the lack of diversity the show depicted, from sexual orientation to skin color. That won’t be the case this time though, Safran said. “There was not a lot of representation the first time around on the show… I was the only gay writer, I think, the entire time I was there. Even when I went to private school in New York in the ’90s, the school didn’t necessarily reflect what was on Gossip Girl. So, this time around the leads are nonwhite. There’s a lot of queer content on this show. It is very much dealing with the way the world looks now, where wealth and privilege come from, and how you handle that. The thing I can’t say is there is a twist, and that all relates to the twist.”
The retooled Gossip Girl does not have a premiere date as of yet, but HBO Max launches in May of 2020. Find out more about the streaming service. Gossip Girl is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
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Penn Badgley, YOUPhoto: Netflix
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