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‘Gossip Girl’ reboot postponed to 2021 due to coronavirus

Leighton Meester and Blake Lively on location for 'Gossip Girl' on June 25, 2008 in Port Washington, New York. James Devaney/WireImage

Gossip Girl‘s reboot will not arrive until 2021 as production has been delayed due to the coronavirus.

The series, which will stream on WarnerMedia’s new streaming service HBO Max, was set to begin filming in March.

“They hadn’t even started production yet; they were in pre-production and ready to roll,” HBO Max chief content officer Kevin Reilly told Vulture.

“Things that would have been really meaningful and high profile have gotten pushed back.”

The 10-episode reboot will follow a new group of Manhattan’s elite rich kids and will not focus on Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf.

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It is set eight years after the original series aired and will follow the lives of private school teens living in New York.

The new cast includes Emily Alyn Lind, Whitney Peak, Johnathan Fernandez, Eli Brown and Jason Gotay. Kristen Bell is returning to narrate the series.

Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the original creators of Gossip Girl, are on board the reboot as executive producers.

Joshua Safran, an original executive producer of Gossip Girl, is also executive producing and writing the new version.“It’s something we’ve been talking about — Josh, Stephanie and I — for a little bit, just in terms of, ‘Is this something we want to explore?’ We’re all so in love with the original and had such an incredible time working on it, and it’s such a big part of our lives,” Safran said after the series was announced last summer.“Then the stars aligned and we had availability to jump, and Warners, obviously, it’s something they’re very passionate about. It seemed like the best time and also the best way to do it.“Eight years after the original website went dark, a new generation of New York private school teens are introduced to the social surveillance of Gossip Girl. The prestige series will address just how much social media — and the landscape of New York itself — has changed in the intervening years.“It’s just a new look at this particular society in New York, the idea being that society changes constantly,” Safran said. “So how has this world changed, how has social media and its effect changed? All of those things allow us to look at the world 12 years on as opposed to just redoing the story. None of us are interested in just redoing a story.”

Gossip Girl aired for six seasons from 2007 to 2012.

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