Baby-Sitters Club Fans – Get Ready
Get ready to return to Stoneybrook, Connecticut—Netflix has ordered a 10-episode live-action adaptation of Ann M. Martin’s best-selling series The Babysitters Club. According to Deadline, Martin will serve as a producer on the show, and the original core characters—Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill, and Dawn Schafer—will all be there (though casting is yet unknown.) The Netflix series will follow these five best friends through the tribulations of adolescence, addressing themes like interpersonal relationships, divorce, and racism through a modern day update to these girls’ babysitting business.
Calling All Passionate Fans
“I’m amazed that there are so many passionate fans of The Baby-Sitters Club after all these years,” Martin said in a statement. “I’m honored to continue to hear from readers—now grown, who have become writers, editors, teachers, librarians, filmmakers—who say that they see a reflection of themselves in the characters of Kristy and her friends.”
The Baby-Sitters Club was incredibly popular at its peak, selling roughly 178 million copies. Martin wrote more than 34 novels in the series—tailored towards middle grade readers—but the narrative universe spawned over 300 additional books penned by a variety of authors, during its 1986-2000 run. Through these novels, which retailed roughly $4 around the time of their publishing, girls were able to learn about rites of passage and given a model for growing up. HBO adapted the show into a one season run in 1990, and Beacon Pictures produced a 1995 feature film, but the story’s appeal has endured even 30 years later.
“The themes of The Baby-Sitters Club still resonate 30 years after the original book series was released, and there has never been a more opportune time to tell an aspirational story about empowering young female entrepreneurs,” Melissa Cobb, VP Kids & Family at Netflix said in a statement.
Another Potential Hit
This show may be another potential hit in the roll tide of 90s and early 2000s remakes. Millennial cultural artifacts are popping up left and right—Neopets is getting launched as a mobile app this summer, the Jonas Brothers announced their reunion this morning, and just last year Netflix released The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, an occult flavored reboot of Sabrina The Teenage Witch.
What these all have in common is a dedication to a demographic that has historically been marginalized or underserved—the adolescent girl. It has already been a banner year for films and television centered on this demographic, with shows like Pen15 and A24 films like Eighth Grade and Lady Bird. And thanks to this wave of Netflix reboots, it seems the adolescent girl will continue to finally get her due.
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