The Mean Girls musical hits the big screen, Kathy Bates is the new Matlock, and Blake Lively signs on for a new sci-fi thriller

Mean Girls The Musical (Broadway Video)

The hit Broadway musical Mean Girls will receive a film adaptation that goes into production this spring. Based on the hit 2004 high school comedy of the same name, this show follows new student Cady Heron trying to fit in with the A-list clique at her new school only to have her plan slowly backfire after she falls for the leader’s ex-boyfriend. The cast includes Angourie Rice (Mare of Easttown) as Cady, Renee Rapp (The Sex Lives of College Girls) as Regina George, Jaquel Spivey (A Strange Loop) as Damien and Auliʻi Cravalho (Moana) as Janis Sarkisian. Tina Fey is also onboard as writer and producer, and she will reprise her role as math teacher Ms. Norbury. The project will be directed by the team of Arturo Perez Jr. and Samantha Jayne (Quarter Life Poetry), with filming set to begin on March 6 in Middletown, New Jersey.

Matlock (CBS)

The classic TV series starring Andy Griffith as the titular cantankerous attorney, which originally ran from 1986-1995, is being reimagined for CBS. The reboot will star Academy Award-winner Kathy Bates (Misery), and Jennie Snyder Urman (Jane the Virgin) will write and executive produce the pilot under her Sutton Street Productions banner. According to press materials: “After achieving success in her younger years, the brilliant septuagenarian Madeline Matlock (Bates) rejoins the work force at a prestigious law firm where she uses her unassuming demeanor and wily tactics to win cases and expose corruption from within. Based on the classic television series of the same name.” Filming for the pilot begins on March 31 in Los Angeles.

Proxy (Hyde Park)

Blake Lively (A Simple Favor, The Shallows) will star in a new film from Kornel Mundruczo (Pieces of a Woman). In this sci-fi thriller, a woman miraculously reawakens after a medical trauma to discover her consciousness has been embedded into a biosynthetic body. As she struggles to re-integrate into her old life, she starts to uncover clues that suggest a darker mystery about her true nature and a larger conspiracy that could alter the relationship between humans and AI forever. Filming begins on March 27 in Jersey City.

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