Sarah Michelle Gellar opens up about the Cruel intentions Reboot shared with NBC and why she’s grateful the pilot didn’t get on the series.
The Peacock Network received a pilot order in February 2016 and announced in October of that year that it would not be going ahead with the show. Gellar had committed to reprising her role as Kathryn Merteuil, but ultimately felt the new take didn’t do the 1999 film justice.
“It was a crazy time,” she said The New York Times. “Nothing against NBC, but Cruel Intentions is straight-streaming. The first day I thought, ‘This won’t work.’ It’s just not a network show. And if it’s a network show, it’s not my Cruel Intentions. So I was really grateful.”
That Cruel intentions The reboot would have happened more than 15 years after the film ended, when Merteuil (Gellar) was vying for control of Valmont International as well as the soul of Bash Casey, son of her late brother Sebastian Valmont, and Annette Hargrove. When Bash discovers his late father’s legacy in a secret journal, he is introduced to a world of sex, money, power and corruption he never imagined.
Fox had previously attempted a television version of the film Manchester Prep, a prequel series. The show shot three episodes that never aired and were then recut into a direct-to-video release called Cruel intentions 2.
In October 2021, it was announced that IMDb TV was working on an updated version of the film based on the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos, but this time set in the world of politics.