TV Discussion: The Wonder Years Reboot with a Black family exec prod. Lee Daniels UPDATE: WTF CANCELLED!

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ABC Orders Quinta Brunson Sitcom, Brandy’s Queens, and the Wonder Years Reboot to Series
By Halle Kiefer@hallekiefer
Quinta Brunson of ABC’s Abbott Elementary. Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Entertainment Weekly

NBC might not be offering any new or returning comedies come this fall, but hopefully ABC knows we need some laughs as soon as possible. It sure seems like it, since the network announced their decision to picked up three sitcoms and one drama to series on Friday. Comedian Quinta Brunson is set to star in Abbott Elementary, the pilot of which she also penned, as one of “a group of dedicated, passionate teachers — and a slightly tone-deaf principal” who are “brought together in a Philadelphia public school where, despite the odds stacked against them, they are determined to help their students succeed in life.” Brunson will be joined by costars Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, Chris Perfetti, Lisa Anne Walter, and Sheryl Lee Ralph.
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Based on a short film of the same name by Tim Curcio, with a pilot written by Maggie Mull and Justin Adler, Maggie stars Rebecca Rittenhouse as “a young woman trying to cope with life as a psychic,” alongside castmates David Del Rio, Nichole Sakura, Angelique Cabral, Leonardo Nam, Ray Ford, Chloe Bridges, Kerri Kenney, and Chris Elliott.

The only drama to be ordered to series by ABC today, Queens, written by Scandal writer Zahir McGee, features Eve, Brandy, Nadine Velazquez, and Naturi Naughton as four forty-something women who “reunite for a chance to recapture their fame and regain the swagger they had as the Nasty Bitches—their ‘90s group that made them legends in the hip-hop world.” And with stage names like Professor Sex, Da Thrill, Butter Pecan, and Xplicit Lyrics, how could they not?

Finally, and unsurprisingly, the network has also picked up the new Wonder Years from executive producer Lee Daniels. With Don Cheadle providing narration, the reboot will be “a coming-of-age story set in the late 1960’s that takes a nostalgic look at a black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama, through the point-of-view of imaginative 12-year-old Dean,” played by Elisha “EJ” Williams. He’ll be joined by Psych’s Dulé Hill and Saycon Sengbloh as his parents Bill and Lillian, and Laura Kariuki as his sister Kim. All of which makes us want to get on our couch and start waiting for primetime now. Just kidding, we were planning on spending the next three months there anyway.
 

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Comedian Quinta Brunson is set to star in Abbott Elementary, the pilot of which she also penned, as one of “a group of dedicated, passionate teachers — and a slightly tone-deaf principal” who are “brought together in a Philadelphia public school where, despite the odds stacked against them, they are determined to help their students succeed in life.”
I bet there will be the obligatory "student threatens to shoot up the school" episode :rolleyes:
 

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It's official: ABC orders The Wonder Years reboot centered on a Black family
Eve and Brandy will also headline a hip-hop drama for the network called Queens.

By Lynette RiceMay 14, 2021 at 04:30 PM EDT


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Share: Fred Savage Has Wanted to Direct Since ‘The Wonder Years’
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Talk about the perfect reboot: ABC has ordered a new take on the classic Fred Savage dramedy The Wonder Years by turning the focus on a Black middle-class family from the '60s.

The new show will take place in Montgomery, Ala., and will be told through the POV of Dean, a 12-year-old boy. The show will feature Don Cheadle as the narrator (he'll pay the adult Dean), as well as Elisha "EJ" Williams as young Dean Williams; Dulé Hill as his father, Bill Williams; Saycon Sengbloh as his mother, Lillian Williams; and Laura Kariuki as his sister, Kim Williams. Julian Lerner will play Brad Hitman, Amari O'Neil will play Cory Long, and Milan Ray will play Keisa Clemmons.

The series is from Lee Daniels Entertainment and will be executive-produced by Savage.

THE WONDER YEARS

Dulé Hill, Saycon Sengbloh, Laura Kariuki, and Elisha Williams on 'The Wonder Years' | CREDIT: ERIKA DOSS/ABC
ABC also ordered three more new shows for its fall lineup: the comedies Abbott Elementary and Maggie and the drama Queens. Abbott is a workplace comedy that takes place at a Philadelphia public school. It stars Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues, Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie, Janelle James as Ava Coleman, Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill, Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti, and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard.

Maggie is about a young female psychic who can already see her future. Rebecca Rittenhouse plays the title role.

Queens is a hip-hop drama about four fortysomething women who reunite their '90s group, Nasty Bitches. It stars Eve as Brianna, a.k.a. Professor Sex; Naturi Naughton as Jill, a.k.a. Da Thrill; Nadine Velazquez as Valeria, a.k.a. Butter Pecan; Taylor Selé as Eric Jones; Pepi Sonuga as Lil Muffin; and Brandy as Naomi, a.k.a. Xplicit Lyrics.

QUEENS

Eve J. Cooper, Brandy Norwood, Nadine Velazquez, and Naturi Naughton on 'Queens' | CREDIT: KIMBERLY SIMMS/ABC
ABC will present its fall lineup to advertisers Tuesday. It has already announced renewals for The Goldbergs, A Million Little Things, The Conners, Home Economics, The Rookie, America's Funniest Home Videos, American Idol, Big Sky, Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, The Good Doctor, Grey's Anatomy, Shark Tank, Supermarket Sweep, and Station 19.
 

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Lee Daniels?

Probably not going to be good

and it would be cool if it was a Wonder Years for the 90's, since the original was in the 90's showing the 60's
 

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Listened to this podcast episode on the drive today ...


45:50 timestamp / mark for the interview ...









4. Showrunner Spotlight.



Comedy veteran Saladin K. Patterson joins us for a wide-ranging interview about ABC’s upcoming update of The Wonder Years. Patterson, who has worked on The Big Bang Theory, Frasier, The Bernie Mac Show, The Last O.G. and Dave, opens up about the origins of the update from exec producer Lee Daniels, the personal stories he brought to the show and why he wanted to be sure it tackled subjects that remain relevant today. “I made clear that we have to touch what it’s like as Black family. I’d lose black cred, if I didn’t touch on that stuff; it scared them a bit. Fred Savage and I were on the same page. The way we got them on board was saying at the end of the day, this will always be a show about someone remembering what it was like to be 12. The stuff that we tackle — racism and political turmoil — would be tackled but always from what it meant to this 12-year-old as he discovered how to understand the world around him.”
 

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‘The Wonder Years’ and the Emptiness of the Black Hollywood Recast
Tirhakah Love
Entertainment Reporter


In the 21st-century redux, main character Dean Williams (Elisha “EJ” Williams) grows up in the eye of a civil rights storm as a middle-class Black kid living in Montgomery, Alabama, in the midst of social upheaval. With the always amiable Don Cheadle playing his adult version, the new Wonder Years adds a Black nostalgic gloss to a particularly fervent time in Black life. But a show like this on a network like ABC, which has a penchant for creating Black shows for white audiences, begs the question of whether or not a mainstream studio’s version of the civil rights era is a vision that Black people want to harken back to. Central to that question, too, is whether or not rebooting or remaking white shows or movies with Black cast members is pushing the progressive buttons that network execs would like audiences to believe.


No one should expect any sort of Black political or social education from The Wonder Years but the metanarrative around the update does imply a level of progressive politics that the show seeks to tap into. As we’re learning in the political world, liberal politics almost never equate to more power for Black people. In fact, Black creators in both mediums would likely consider that the practice of shoehorning Black people into white uniforms actually does quite a disservice to representations of Blackness. The Black Recast, then, could be a lot more regressive than we think.
And, of course, it’s not just happening on television. The Black Recast has its tendrils all over Hollywood. Earlier this year, Warner Bros. announced the development of two separate Superman projects, with Michael B. Jordan’s production company creating a series based on an alternative version of the Man of Steel, while Ta-Nehisi Coates was enlisted to write a film version of Clark Kent. Anthony Mackie just slipped into the Captain America role without any mention of the ways that military policing has led to the destruction and corruption of African nations. We have yet to witness Daniel Craig passing his Walther PPK to the new Bond, Lashana Lynch, who has the (un)lucky privilege of being both the first Black and first female 007. No breath should be held for that action vehicle to say anything of note about the ways spies destabilize economies or kick off coup d’etats, but it’s very easy to imagine how the representation-industrial complex will tout Lynch’s casting as some sort of step forward for Blacks in Hollywood.

Representation, itself, feels like a distraction not just from the racist underpinnings of the industry but from the ways Hollywood very much exists within an imperial project that seeks to propagate false notions of reality. When reboots and the Black Recast wed, it can mask a practical issue central to the remake-industrial complex—it steals precious time and resources that could be distributed to original IP from non-white, non-straight creators. Kathleen Newman-Bremang, senior editor at Refinery29’s Unbothered, spoke to the inherent regression of the reboot-recast knot. “These reboots are absolutely taking something away from original content,” she told CBC News in July, “and they’re getting a time slot that could go to another Black, Indigenous, or person-of-color creator.” More interestingly, Black creators are almost never given the reins to a predominantly white cast. There’s a quiet belief that Black people can only write Black characters. This segregation creates opportunities for tokenism that end up glorifying a small number of non-white artists who get similar roles over and over again.


“There’s a quiet belief that Black people can only write Black characters. This segregation creates opportunities for tokenism that end up glorifying a small number of non-white artists who get similar roles over and over again.”
In her remarkable Atlantic cover story on the unwritten rules of Black Television, Hannah Giorgis chronicles the changing sameness of television from Sanford and Son to the present. The 20th century represented a moment where more and more Black experiences were being portrayed on screen but from the vantage of white writers who would make their Black colleagues “negotiate authenticity.” They had to portray Blackness in a way “that is acceptable to white showrunners, studio executives, and viewers.” But that process is made even more depraved now. A Black recast is, to some degree, one of the most ubiquitous examples of Blackface, wherein white executives mask their interests and demands behind a Black mask and deem it “Black art.”
Our present version of nostalgia is a multidimensional mirror. The white version of The Wonder Years was a 1980s look into a 1960s America that, having lost the Vietnam War, was ripe for revisionism. Now, as the current generation reckons with our losses in terms of race and class freedom, another revision is at hand. This time in Blackface—and perhaps even more regressive than ever before.


 
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