charlies angels

Sony Rebooting ‘Charlie’s Angels’ Again With ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Writer

Sony is trying its hand at yet another Charlie’s Angels reboot, with a new film in the femme fatale crime adventure franchise in the works with scriptwriter Pete Chiarelli.

Charlie’s Angels (1979)

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Chiarelli, best known for his work in romantic comedies like 2009’sThe Proposal and 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians, has been hired to pen the reboot’s script, and although it’s unclear who will produce the new movie, sources claim that Drew Barrymore and her Flower Films banner, which was in charge of the franchise’s first big-screen adaptation, will be back for this new version.

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Charlie’s Angels began as an ABC crime drama which aired from 1976 to 1981 and starred Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith as a trio of detectives working for the Townsend Agency run by its enigmatic owner, Charlie Townsend. The show became a pop culture sensation and spawned a big-screen adaptation in the form of Sony’s 2000 movie of the same name, which starred Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu, alongside a sequel, 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

While both the TV show and early movies were massively successful, the franchise wasn’t without its fair share of flops, as a new series was attempted in 2011, but was cancelled after seven episodes. In 2019, Sony tried to relaunch the franchise yet again with another Charlie’s Angels feature film starring a new trio, Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska, but the reboot failed to capture what made its predecessors so great to begin with and was a disastrous failure at the box office.

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003)

Now, after two movie reboots of mixed quality, Sony is trying to revive the Charlie’s Angels franchise yet again, but considering Chiarelli’s involvement in the project and his past works, it looks like this reboot might be the biggest tonal departure the franchise has seen yet. Still, the project is very much in its infancy, so it remains to be seen how the film will shape up and whether it will respect the legacy of the original source material or continue the downward spiral of its more modern adaptations.