Last week we reported that ABC is currently adapting a show based on the Beauty and the Beast fairytale.
Just a few weeks earlier, we discussed how ABC was producing a modern retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Interestingly enough, we now have word that yet another adaptation of each classic story will be hitting televisions around the same time.
Of course, this isn’t too strange, as networks often have access to the same audience research, and draw the same conclusions about what will be popular.
I guess it’s just a coincidence that these two ideas are also so similar to one another. I mean, the really odd thing here is that both of theJekyll and Hyde adaptations are on the same network.
Yes, ABC is working on Hyde, which centers on ER doctor Grant Hyde who develops a cure for his own eye defect which turns him into a monster. The alternate version of him manifests while he is sleeping, much like the original novel.
There is also the ABC version of Jekyll & Hyde, which is about a young woman, a criminologist, who falls for a scientist with a dangerous secret – at night, he turns into a monster version of himself.
Sure, it’s possible ABC is developing both with the intention of eventually choosing between the two, since having two shows based on the same mythology premiering at the same time with similar names would likely play hell with viewers, and very few would watch both shows. I’d honestly be very surprised if both shows make it through to the 2012 pilot season.
ABC is also working on Beauty and the Beast, which they hope will sit well with the same audience who loved Once Upon a Time this fall. At the time, I joked that it had been tried before, back in the 80’s.
Now it seems as if The CW is rebooting the very same show. The 80’s series which starred Ron Pearlman and Linda Hamilton was about a pretty, professional girl who discovers a group of ugly people living beneath the streets of New York, and who chooses the most handsome among them as her lover.
The CW typically does teen drama stuff, so expect some of the details to change, and for the actors to be much younger. It will likely be similar in tone with their other shows.
Whichever of these four shows survives will air their pilots next fall.
