How The Murder, She Wrote Movie Will Modernize Jessica Fletcher [Exclusive]
What would the cozy crime-solving world of Jessica Fletcher look like if "Murder, She Wrote" were made in 2023 rather than the '80s? Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, the writers of this year's GameStop stocks dramedy "Dumb Money," are prepared to answer that question. The pair have been tapped to write a movie adaptation of "Murder, She Wrote," and while a big-screen version of Cabot Cove may seem antithetical to the weekend binge-watch vibe of the original series, Schuker Blum and Angelo have plenty of ideas about how to bring Jessica into the 21st century.
"We were both kids who were suburban kids who just grew up watching 'Murder, She Wrote,' and anything else that broadcast TV fed to us," Angelo told /Film's Ben Pearson in a recent interview alongside her co-writer. She noted that the big-screen adaptation of the long-running series "has been the love of our lives for the last couple of years," while Schuker Blum said the beloved Angela Lansbury character helped inform both their career paths. "I think we always credit curious women like Jessica Fletcher for why we became journalists initially," she admitted. While the pair weren't able to divulge too many details about the movie, which they're writing for Universal Pictures, Schuker Blum did note that both Cabot Cove, Maine, and the original protagonist will feature into the film. "Cabot Cove will be a big part of it, and Jessica. All the kind of fan favorites," the writer explained.
Making Murder, She Wrote the next Barbenheimer
The screenwriting duo and former Wall Street Journal reporters seem to see the leap from case-of-the-week television to a feature-length film not as an impossible task, but as a chance to get creative. Angelo explained:
"It's been really fun to take a character who was constrained by the limits of broadcast television in the eighties and nineties — she's not allowed to have too much depth, she's not allowed to have an emotional arc, she's certainly not allowed to make mistakes — and to imagine, in 2023, the possibilities of that character."
This isn't to say that the "Murder, She Wrote" film will be set in 2023 (almost nothing is known about the movie at this point), but that it'll approach the character from a modern perspective and perhaps inject a bit more conflict into her life. "We would never dishonor Jessica Fletcher," Angelo said, getting ahead of folks who might say the heroine should stick solely to solving crimes. "In fact, the opposite. We have watched every episode two or three times. We know the ins and outs of that character and Cabot Cove. And the idea is to render that in three dimensions worthy of movie theater screens." Just as Barbenheimer inspired audiences to dress in their finest hot pink attire, the writers hope "Murder, She Wrote" will inspire its own event movie fashion moment. The film is "a real event that people are going to put on their cardigans, hopefully, and go see," Angelo says. We're so ready for it.
The "Murder, She Wrote" movie does not yet have a release date, but in the meantime, you can catch all 12 seasons of the original series on Peacock.