Paramount+ wrap up: New Pet Sematary movie, The Italian Job TV series & more

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Paramount ain't f**king around when it comes to streaming. With CBS All Access set to be rebranded as Paramount+ next week, the studio has announced an incredible number of projects that are destined for the service. One of the ways they're looking at expanding their library of content is by returning to their iconic brands, and it was announced today that they're developing a variety of TV shows based on Paramount movies such as Love Story, Fatal Attraction, Flashdance, The Italian Job, and The Parallax View. Let's break it down.

The new take on Love Story will be an ongoing series executive produced by Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, and Lis Rowinski through their Fake Empire banner. "From the main title theme to the class conflict and classic American style, Love Story is truly iconic," Schwartz and Savage said in a joint statement to THR. "We’re beyond excited to update it for the next generation, and to be working again with Nicole and the Paramount Television Studios team as well our friends at CBS Television Studios." Moving on to Fatal Attraction, the series is described as a "deep-dive reimagining" of the original film starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close that will be told "through the lens of modern attitudes when it comes to strong women, personality disorders, victim shaming and coercive control." Alexandra Cunningham and Kevin Hayne (Dirty John) are onboard to script the series. The Flashdance series was actually announced last year, with the new take focusing on "a young Black woman with ballet dreams and a strip club reality who struggles to find her place in the world while navigating romance, money, art, friendship and how to love herself." There's also a new take on The Italian Job, the classic Michael Caine action thriller that was itself remade with Mark Wahlberg in 2003. The series will revolve around the grandchildren of Michael Caine's character as they "inherit his old safety deposit box and reignite the quest for the infamous Italian bullion." Paramount Television CEO Nicole Clemens said that the series will be a "big, fun, international show." Last but not least is a series based on The Parallax View, which revolved around a reporter's investigation into a secretive organization whose primary focus is political assassination. Clemons told THR that her job is to "find Paramount+ The Handmaid's Tale, the Mad Men, The Walking Dead — the show that helps define them. It's really ambitious and it's an offering that is going to be incredibly appealing and compelling to people who are in the market for another streamer."

Paramount also announced that Star Trek: Prodigy, a family-centric CG animated series about a group of alien kids who commander a seemingly abandoned Starfleet vessel, will debut on Paramount+ later this year before airing again on Nickelodeon. Paramount+ programming chief Julie McNamara told Variety that the choice to move Prodigy to the streaming service came from data that showed subscribers who also watched Star Trek shows also watched Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra. "It seemed very wise for us to access both the ‘Star Trek’ fan base that’s already on the platform and also kids," she said. "Those are the two groups that you want to reach." You can find a first-look at the new characters below.

Julie McNamara also dropped a tidbit about the recently announced revival of Criminal Minds, saying that it will involve the team coming back together to investigate a single case over the course of ten episodes. Talks are currently underway with most of the cast-members from the final season of the series about returning for the revival. In addition, Deadline has reported that there's also a true-crime docuseries in the works that will serve as a companion to the Criminal Minds revival that will feature a real former FBI profiler examining real cases and real criminal behavior and that a prominent Criminal Minds cast-member is in talks to host the show.

Getting into the feature-film side of things, it's also been revealed that a handful of films will be heading to the service, including the recently announced Paranormal Activity film that is slated to be directed by Will Eubank and written by Christopher Landon. It's said that the new project will be an "unexpected retooling" of the franchise, but that it will continue to be in the found-footage format. Additionally, there's also a new Pet Sematary movie that will be based on the Stephen King bestseller and will tell an origin story, as well as The In Between, a supernatural romance directed by Arie Posin which stars Joey King as a teenage girl who survives a car accident who believes that her boyfriend, who perished in the accident, is trying to reconnect with her from the other side. Mike Judge is also set to make another Beavis & Butt-Head movie for the service, alongside the revival series that was order last year.