The beloved YA adult series The Baby-Sitters Club is getting re-adapted.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix has picked up The Baby-Sitters Club as a series and will offer a modern take on the Ann M. Martin series, which focused on four friends—Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Stacey—who create and run a neighborhood babysitting service in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. GLOW writer Rachel Shukert is set as showrunner and Broad City‘s Lucia Aniello will direct and executive produce. The Social Network‘s Michael De Luca is also an executive producer.
Netflix VP of Kids and Family Melissa Cobb said in a statement: “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,” adding that they want to “contemporize the storylines and adventures of this iconic group of girlfriends to reflect modern-day issues.” In a 2016 New Yorker piece about the books, Brooke Hauser wrote: “For many of us, The Baby-Sitters Club offered an early glimpse into the world of ambitious working women. Granted, they were middle-schoolers, but they were girl bosses, role models long before pop culture gave us Olivia Pope, Liz Lemon, or Leslie Knope.”
The book series was adapted into a 1990 HBO series (currently on Hulu) and a 1995 Melanie Mayron-directed movie that starred Rachel Leigh Cook and Schuyler Fisk. With some truly inspired new shows about teen friendships dominating streaming—like PEN15 and Sex Education—the series has its work cut out for it, though it will likely run more family-friendly.
A release date has not been announced yet.
