Make room, “Clueless” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary”: another contemporary spin on Jane Austen is on the way. Eleanor Burgess is writing “Modern Austen,” a one-hour anthology series that will update Austen’s novels. She is also executive producing with Homegrown Pictures’ Stephanie Allain. The project is in development at The CW, per Deadline.
Hailing from Warner Bros TV, where Allain is under a deal, “Modern Austen” “reimagines Austen’s beloved novels as six modern stories, offering a kaleidoscopic look at love and family in our time of inequality and disconnection,” according to the source. “Each season is a different novel, beginning with ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ set in contemporary San Francisco.”
Homegrown Pictures’ Gabrielle Ebron will produce. She and Allain are also collaborating on “The Fighting Shirley Chisholm,” a biopic about the trailblazing politician starring Danai Gurira and directed by Cherien Dabis.
“Modern Austen” is hardly the first project to bring Austen’s literature to the present day. Amy Heckerling’s “Clueless” places “Emma” in a ’90s Beverly Hills high school, while Sharon Maguire’s “Bridget Jones” is an early-aughts retelling of “Pride and Prejudice.” Alex Appel’s “Modern Persuasion,” a contemporary take on Austen’s final completed novel, was recently acquired by Samuel Goldwyn Films.
In other Austen-related news, “Succession’s” Sarah Snook is set to star in an adaptation of “Persuasion” from director Mahalia Belo and screenwriter Jessica Swale. The most recent Austen film adaptation, Autumn de Wilde’s “Emma.,” starring Anya Taylor-Joy, was released earlier this year.
Burgess is a staff writer on HBO’s “Perry Mason” reboot, which wrapped its first season earlier this year and has been renewed for a second.
Allain co-produced the 2020 Oscars, making history as the first African American woman to do so. She’s a founding member of the gender parity project ReFrame, and has produced the film and TV versions of “Dear White People,” “Beyond the Lights,” “Hustle & Flow,” and “The Weekend,” among many other projects.
