Little House on the Prairie is getting a long-awaited reboot

Entertainment Weekly

EW reports that Paramount TV Studios and Anonymous Content -- the studio behind Homecoming, Dickinson and 13 Reasons Why -- are developing a reboot of the Laura Ingalls Wilder 1800s farm-set autobiographical novels that inspired the 1974-1983 NBC drama series starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert. Trip Friendly will serve as executive producer. His dad, the late former CBS News president and iconic TV producer Fred W. Friendly, bought the TV and movie rights to Wilder's autobiographical novels and later sold them to NBC. In EW's December issue, Lynette Rice explored why it's taken so long to get a Little House reboot off the ground. "There have been surprisingly few efforts to resurrect Little House on the Prairie, the long-running drama about Laura 'Half-Pint' Ingalls (Melissa Gilbert) and her family’s life on the farm in the late 1800s," says Rice. "While beloved period pieces like Little Women continue to inspire new interpretations by Hollywood, the other Little — based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of auto-biographical novels — has been mostly overlooked during our current reboot-happy era. (A forgettable mini-series aired as part of The Wonderful World of Disney in 2005, and a touring stage musical ran from 2008 to 2010.) But interest in the franchise has never diminished. Reruns of the 1974-83 series continue to air in 30 countries worldwide, including U.S. networks like Cozi TV, UPtv, and Hallmark Drama, where it remains the most-watched program excluding movies. Family Guy has parodied the show’s iconic opening and closing credits twice. And on Dec. 29, PBS will devote an installment of its American Masters docuseries to Ingalls Wilder, which will cover everything from her libertarian politics to the lingering suspicions that her daughter, Rose Lane, did some (or all) of the writing." Meanwhile, original cast member Alison Arngrim, who played snobby menace Nellie Oleson, says she'd sign on for the revival. I’m just the right age to play Mrs. Oleson,” she says. “I’m totally there. I have no shame.”