Pretty Little Liars alum Shay Mitchell teaming with creator for ABC series
Instead, Deadline reports that Mitchell and the original PLL show creator are teaming up again for an ABC pilot entitled “Heiresses,” one that has at least a put pilot commitment at the network. (Basically, if ABC doesn’t at least give the show a pilot they face some significant penalties.) Like Pretty Little Liars this is based on the work of Sara Shepard, but it’s a completely different story geared more towards an adult audience.
Per the logline, the main push of the story revolves around a powerful family in the Saybrooks who have “been blessed with great fortune, but cursed with epic loss. The events surrounding a deadly accident a year ago drove a wedge between the once inseparable diamond empire heiresses. But when an unspeakable tragedy brings the cousins back together, they create a truly unbreakable bond. They set to solve the mystery of who wants the Saybrook family dead before one of them is the next target.”
Basically, there’s death, mystery, intrigue, and wealth at the center of this show, which is the sort of stuff that can make a series a hit at ABC. We do think it’s the right fit for them given that they’re really putting a lot of stock right now in dramas that can be discussion on social media and geared largely towards female audiences. Remember that their most-popular drama at the moment remains Grey’s Anatomy, and for a while Scandal was a cultural phenomenon before the ratings for it started to peter off a little bit. They’re also on a little bit of an upswing thanks to the success of their new Monday-night series The Good Doctor, but we’ve got to see its ratings for the next few weeks before we officially christen it a hit. We just think that it has promise given that it has another talented young lead in Freddie Highmore and a prolific producer in David Shore.
Looking beyond this specific Shay Mitchell news
There’s another story on CarterMatt already about the aforementioned The Perfectionists, which is going to feature the return of both Sasha Pieterse and Janel Parrish in their Pretty Little Liars roles of Alison and Mona. There’s no word on how some of the other characters will be involved, but given the relationship between Ali and Mitchell’s Emily we do wonder if there is potential for Shay to show up there down the road. If she does continue to work with King in some capacity, we absolutely do think that it’s possible.
Do you want to see Shay Mitchell in a new series?
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