Don’t turn up your nose at this news — wiggle it instead.
The classic TV sitcom Bewitched will get a new lease on life via Sony Television. The concept is reportedly being prepped for an animated reboot targeted toward younger viewers. It’s being pitched as “Hannah Montana meets Harry Potter.”
The original Bewitched aired on ABC from 1964 to 1972, and then has remained on TV pretty much ever since in syndication. The series starred Elizabeth Montgomery as a witch named Samantha, who was married to an ordinary man named Darrin. (Dick York played the character in early seasons; he was later replaced by actor Dick Sargent.) The couple’s divergent backgrounds created friction in their domestic lives. It’s one of the quintessential supernatural TV series of its era, along with I Dream of Jeannie,
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While the original Bewitched was live-action, it also featured a very famous animated opening credits sequence.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the animated Bewitched will focus on Tabitha, the daughter of Samantha and Darrin, who was a child on the original series. In the new Bewitched, Tabitha would be 13 and “juggles two lives attending middle school while also being secretly enrolled in a magical academy run by her grandmother, Endora.”
This would not be the first animated spinoff from Bewitched — and in fact, it’s not the first animated Bewitched featuring Tabitha. The character was given her own animated TV film called Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family in the 1970s.
This is the latest attempt to revive Bewitched for modern audiences, but not the first. In 2005, the late Nora Ephron used the property as the basis for a high concept feature film starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell. In that version, someone decides to remake Bewitched and winds up casting a woman (Kidman) who is a real witch. Despite the impressive cast and creative team, the movie got mediocre reviews and only earned $130 million worldwide against a budget of some $85 million.
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