Reese Witherspoon working on Legally Blonde spin-off series

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Wenlei Ma
The Nightly
Reese Witherspoon is bringing back Legally Blonde.
Reese Witherspoon is bringing back Legally Blonde. Credit: Supplied

Reese Witherspoon is in development on a Legally Blonde streaming spin-off.

Deadline reported the news the series is coming out of Amazon Studios with The OC and Gossip Girl writers Joshua Schwartz and Stephanie Savage working on the top-secret concept.

Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, is involved in the process but there is no confirmation whether she will reprise her famously pink-loving character. Deadline said there are whispers of a second Legally Blonde spin-off but that idea is early days.

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Schwartz and Savage are prolific TV writers and producers. Schwartz broke out in 2003 as the then 27-year-old creator of The OC, which Savage also worked on.

Since then, the pair have developed and written for a raft of younger-skewing TV projects including Nancy Drew, Dynasty and Runaways. The two were also attached at one point to a Sweet Valley High TV series before the project went quiet.

Legally Blonde was released in 2001 and starred Witherspoon as Elle Woods, a sunny blonde who finds her optimism, cheery disposition and bright style clashing with the seriousness of the venerable Harvard Law School.

Legally Blonde stars Reese Witherspoon.
Reese Witherspoon is working on a Legally Blonde spin-off series. Credit: Unknown/Supplied

But she soon wins over her doubters and clears a woman suspected of her murder through her deductive reasoning and intimate knowledge of beauty protocols.

The film was a box office hit, earning $US180 million at the box office against a production budget of $US18 million, and has endured in the zeitgeist with several meme-able moments. It also starred Jennifer Coolidge, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair and Ali Larter.

A sequel followed in 2003 with Witherspoon returning to the role, but she did not come back for an on-screen role in the 2009 Legally Blondes, a direct-to-video movie which had originally been filmed as a TV pilot for a series that was eventually not commissioned.

A third Legally Blonde movie has been in the works since 2020 with Mindy Kaling and Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Dan Goor attached as writers but has been pushed back on the schedule several times.

The Legally Blonde franchise also takes in the stage production Legally Blonde: The Musical, an adaptation of the film. It opened in San Francisco in 2007 before moving to Broadway and has also played internationally including in the UK, South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands and Australia.

The Australian production won five Helpmann Awards.

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