Heathers TV Show: Thoughts and Opinions on trailer

Heathers The Musical Album Cover
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As many of you may already know, Heathers has been turned into a TV show and the series premiere is on March 7th. If you don't know what Heathers is and why I just happen to be talking about it on a theatre blog, let me explain.

Movie JD and Veronica
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The story of Heathers first came about in the late 1980's as a movie. The movie starred Winona Ryder as Veronica and Christan Slater as J.D. and has a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. In the early to mid-2010's, the movie was transformed into a musical which performed off-broadway at New World Stages starring Barrett Wilbert Weed as Veronica and Ryan McCartan as J.D. And I have to say, apart from a few necessary changes in order to adapt the movie to the stage, it is the exact same plot.

It is now 2018, almost 30 years since the original movie came out, and it is now becoming a TV show.

When I first heard about this, I have to admit there was a mixture of excitement and fear going through my mind. Excitement for a new adaptation to come out that is easily feasible for me to access, and fear of what they were going to do with this beloved story.

Musical JD and Veronica
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In January of this year, the trailer for the show (starring Grace Victoria Cox as Veronica and James Scully as J.D.) came out and it happened to pop up in my YouTube feed. I was very excited to see it, but as I continued to watch it, that excitement quickly went away.

The trailer was awful. I do believe that they are going for a modern adaptation of the "Killer Cult Classic", but that kind of ruins the storyline a bit.

Disclaimer: I may be getting into spoilers about the plot of the movie and the musical. If you have no clue what the story is about, I suggest you go listen to the musical and watch the movie before you continue reading.

TV Show JD and Veronica
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Since the original story is based in the 80's, there are certain tones in it that would make it hard to adapt the story to modern day. For example, in the original story, there is a character named Martha Dunstock and her character is quite large. In the movie and the musical, Martha is made fun of for her weight and is nicknamed Martha Dumptruck. In the TV show, however, the main Heather, Heather Chandler, is a plus-sized woman and is a symbol of body confidence.

Also, in the original story, J.D and Veronica kill two football players and make it look like a suicide, leaving a suicide note saying that they died because they would never be able to display their romantic affections for each other. Remember, the original story was written in the 80's and the LGBTQ+ movement was not where it is today. Now in the TV show, one of the Heathers, Heather Duke, is transgender.

These both are two very important aspects of the original story that are no longer going to be present in the TV show.

Besides that, I did see quite a bit of the original plot in the trailer, such as the death of Heather Chandler and J.D. and Veronica's relationship. But overall, I feel as though they are not staying true to the original story and that kind of hurts a little.

I feel that they should have kept the original story, time period and all, in order to make a TV show of this work.

I asked you guys on Twitter and Instagram what you guys thought of the TV show coming out and whether or not you were going to watch it. On Twitter, the vast majority of you guys said that you were not going to watch the TV Show. The next highest was that you had mixed feelings about the show, but you were going to watch it anyways, which is actually where I am at. The third highest result was that you didn't really care and then the last place, with 0 votes was definitely watching. 
On Instagram, when I asked if you guys were going to watch it, everyone who voted said no.

Now, I am going to watch the TV show, just to see what they are going to do with it, but as of right now, I don't have high expectations of it being any good. The trailer has really disappointed me.

When Season 1 is over, I will make another blog post giving the thoughts on the show, so stay tuned for that.

If you want to see the trailer and form your own opinions, click here.




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