Selena Gomez Is Executive Producing A Comedy Series Based On “16 Candles”
16 Candles is one of those movies I loved as a kid but is nearly unwatchable today. So I’m not particularly pressed that Selena Gomez is going to turn it into a half-hour single-camera comedy series for Peacock. Deadline reports that Selena will executive produce 15 Candles, which will be a “reconfiguration of the world” of John Hughes’ original. I don’t know if that means it’s going to be set in a different town, or if we’re finally going to get to see what things look like on the other side of the tracks in Shermer, Illinois. And I mean the OTHER OTHER side where all the non-exchange student minorities live, not where Molly Ringwald lived in Pretty in Pink.
Deadline reports:
Tanya Saracho (Vida), Gabriela Revilla Lugo (Whiplash, Palm Springs), and Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building, 13 Reasons Why) are developing the single-camera comedy 15 Candles, a reconfiguration of the world of John Hughes‘ 16 Candles.
The half-hour series—from UCP for Peacock—follows four young Latinas starting high school as they overcome their feelings of invisibility while exploring what it means to leave childhood behind through the lens of the traditional female coming-of-age rite: the quinceañera.
Well, that doesn’t sound like the plot of 16 Candles AT ALL. I don’t know why there’s a need to summon the ghost of Long Duk Dong to tell a story about Latina girls with frilly dresses. But then again, I don’t know why John Hughes felt the need to summon the ghost of Mickey Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi to tell a story about a white girl with frilly panties. But that’s Hollywood for you. Since we’re already cracking open the John Hughes canon for fodder, we might as well get ourselves a gender-flipped Weird Science reimagined as a gritty Sci-Fi thriller about two horny teen girls who summon a Doctor Manhattan-like sex god while wearing jockstraps on their heads. Jesus, I’m good at this. I should really think about getting an agent.
Pic: Xavier Collin/ABACA/INSTAR