Gossip Girl reboot is ‘very queer’ and starts production in October

Production on the HBO Max Gossip Girl reboot will now begin in October.

Filming was meant to start in the spring but was delayed, like the majority of studio productions, due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Warner Bros. confirmed to Variety this week that the 10-episode series will start production towards the end of the month in Vancouver, New York and Los Angeles.

Showrunner Joshua Safran teased fans with more details about the reimagined show as he took to Twitter on Sunday night to answer questions about the upcoming show.

He revealed the show is going to be ‘very, very queer’ and will be different from the original series with the ‘majority’ of the characters ‘diverse and/or queer’.

It follows similar comments Safran made last fall about the new direction the reboot is moving in.   

Safran served as an executive producer and writer on the original series, and is now creator and executive producer on the reboot. 

In May HBO Max chief content officer Kevin Reilly revealed in a new interview with Vulture that production had been pushed due to COVID-19.

He added that filming hadn’t begun and it was about to start when the COVID-19 outbreak started to spread rapidly. 

‘They hadn’t even started production yet; they were in pre-production and ready to roll,’ Reilly said.

With the production delay, the series is now expected to debut sometime in 2021, and not later in 2020 as originally planned.

The original series followed a group of privileged private school teenagers who live on New York’s Upper East Side, whose lives are always being watched by a secretive blogger exposing their secrets.

Blake Lively starred as Serena van der Woodsen, alongside Leighton Meester as Blair Waldorf, Penn Badgley as Dan Humphrey, Chace Crawford as Nate Archibald, Ed Westwick as Chuck Bass, Kelly Rutherford as Lily van der Woodsen and Matthew Settle as Rufus Humphrey.

The series, created by Josh Savage and Stephanie Schwartz, based on the book by Cecily von Ziegesar, ran for six seasons between 2007 and 2012. 

The new show will be set eight years after the events of the original series, after the original Gossip Girl website ‘went dark.’

The reboot will follow a new generation of teens who are introduced to, ‘the social surveillance of Gossip Girl,’ while also addressing how much social media and New York City itself have changed since the original show. 

The reboot has cast Emily Alyn Lind as the main character Audrey, with Kristen Bell returning to narrate as Gossip Girl.

The cast also includes Eli Brown, Adam Chanler-Berat, Thomas Doherty, Jonathan Fernandez, Tavi Gevinson, Jason Gotay, Zion Moreno and Whitney Peak.

Aside from Kristen Bell returning as the narrator, there is no indication yet that any of the original stars are returning, though Ed Westwick recently said he thinks it’s unlikely he’ll be back.