Shonda Rhimes Unveils Plans For 8 Netflix Series
Shonda Rhimes’ 8 new shows sound amazing
Details are finally emerging about the new shows Shonda Rhimes will create in her partnership with Netflix and from what we can tell it’s going to be epic. The insanely talented and hardworking Rhimes alongside her team at Shondaland will bring us eight new series on Netflix. The best part: they’re mostly female-focused stories.
The world came to know and love the writer and producer when her series of shows at ABC blew up. Rhimes created Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, and Scandal. And she was the executive producer on those shows plus For The People, Station 19, The Catch, How to Get Away with Murder, and five other lesser-known TV shows.
When her shows hit Netflix, even more, people fell in love with the worlds that the creative minds at Shondaland created. So, it makes sense why the streaming giant inked a deal with Rhimes and her team for $300 million. The new shows are all about the ladies, and we’ll be shocked if we don’t love all of them. According to The Hollywood Reporter, these are the new series we should expect from Shondaland.
The Residence sounds like a perfect fit for Rhimes and the Shondaland team, who brought us the unmissable Scandal. The series is based on the 2015 nonfiction book by Kate Andersen Brower that covers the private lives of political giants – U.S. Presidents, their families, and the people that help them run the White House. Scandal ran for seven seasons, and we’re hoping this new political drama will last just as long (or longer).
Sexism in the workplace is an everyday reality for many women. Rhimes’ new series Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change will tackle one such story. It’s based on Ellen Pao’s memoir that detailed her life and career including her hellish time with workplace discrimination that led her to sue a powerful Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Pao’s memoir, which came out before the Time’s Up movement, shed light on how toxic the tech world can be — especially for women and underrepresented groups.
Pulling inspiration from another book, Rhimes will create The Warmth of Other Suns, which will be based on the nonfiction piece by Isabel Wilkerson. The Pulitzer-winning book detailed the fleeing of African Americans to the North and West during the Jim Crow years in the South. Wilkerson’s book has won countless awards and was named one of the best books of the year in 2010 by The New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and several others.
The untitled Bridgerton project will focus on the series of best-selling novels from Julia Quinn. Rhimes series will be “a feminist take on Regency England romance, unveiling the glittering, wealthy, sexual, painful, funny and sometimes lonely lives of the women and men in London’s high society marriage mart as told through the eyes of the powerful Bridgerton family,” according to The Reporter.
The Anna Delvey project will bring a famous magazine story to our screens. “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People” by Jessica Pressler might be the most popular story ever published by New York Magazine. It exposed how Delvey conned rich people and became a New York City “It” girl with a series of lies and lavish purchases. After the article went viral, lots of Hollywood producers wanted the rights to the story, but Rhimes won and will be writing the series.
Sunshine Scouts sounds like it’ll be darkly comic. The Reporter described it as an “ironic and twisty show about foul-mouthed teenage girls who are trapped at the end of the world.” The Shondaland team told The Reporter that the 30-minute comedy focuses on “a ragtag group of teenage girls at sleepaway camp who must then summon their moxie and survival skills to weather the fallout and ensure all that remains of humanity abides by the Sunshine Scout Law.”
The Pico & Sepulveda series will be set in Mexican California in the 1840s. At the time, the now-state of California belonged to Mexico. The series will “track the end of an idyllic era there as American forces threaten brutality and war at the border to claim this breathtaking land for their own,” The Reporter said. The story could not come at a better time as we continue to hear horror stories about Trump’s America putting children cages at the Mexican-America border.
Hot Chocolate Nutcracker is unlike all of the other series Rhimes is working on or set to create, but that’s not a bad thing. The docuseries will give audiences a “behind-the-scenes look at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy’s award-winning reimagining of the classic ballet The Nutcracker.” Rhimes is partnering with exec producer and director Debbie Allen from her Grey’s Anatomy days and Scandal director Oliver Bokelberg.
Rhimes described what she’s hoping to foster during her partnership with Netflix, “I wanted the new Shondaland to be a place where we expand the types of stories we tell, where my fellow talented creatives could thrive and make their best work and where we as a team come to the office each day filled with excitement.”
