{"id":2173807,"date":"2025-11-23T20:30:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T20:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2173807"},"modified":"2025-11-23T20:30:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T20:30:19","slug":"a-show-that-defined-the-90s-blocked-the-first-attempt-at-a-heathers-tv-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/a-show-that-defined-the-90s-blocked-the-first-attempt-at-a-heathers-tv-series\/","title":{"rendered":"A Show That Defined The ’90s Blocked The First Attempt At A Heathers TV Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Heathers” gave Winona Ryder an early-career flop<\/a>, but it wasn’t a failure by any means, as the dark teen comedy has since gone on to become a cult classic. The story centers around Ryder’s character, Veronica Sawyer, who gets accepted into her high school’s most popular \u2014 and unpleasant \u2014 social clique, the Heathers, and simultaneously starts dating an outcast, J.D. (Christian Slater), who wants to kill all of the popular kids. Despite its gruesome premise, “Heathers” is one of the best movies about high school ever made<\/a>, and it almost became a ’90s TV series \u2014 until “Beverly Hills, 90210,” a bona fide smash hit, ruined everything.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly<\/a>\u00a0for the outlet’s 2014 oral history of the film, “Heathers” writer Daniel Waters revealed that he and director Michael Lehmann once pitched a small-screen project set in the same universe to Fox executive Peter Chernin, who was a fan of the idea. Unfortunately, the network only had room for one high school-themed series starring Shannen Doherty (who also appears in the “Heathers” movie), and it went with the other one. As Waters recalled:<\/p>\n

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“He said, ‘This is a great script. It’s down to this or ‘Beverly Hills High.” Which, of course, ended up being called ‘90210.’ Doherty wins in the end after all.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s unknown if the planned “Heathers” TV series would have been as biting as the movie, but the mention of Doherty suggests that it would have, at least, been connected to it. However, Fox probably didn’t regret the decision to greenlight “Beverly Hills, 90210,” as it became appointment viewing for millions of teenagers and is now regarded as a classic in its own right. “Heathers,” meanwhile, also got a show of its own, and … yeah.<\/p>\n

Read more: The Blacklist: Everything We Know About Raymond Reddington’s Real Identity<\/a><\/p>\n

The Heathers TV show we got didn’t fare well<\/h2>\n
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