'Love, Simon' TV Series In The Works At Disney+ Following Fox 2000 Demise
Love, Simon is about to tack on a big postscript. The hit 2018 LGBT coming-of-age movie was a rousing success for Fox 2000, the 20th Century Fox sub-label that focused on crowd-pleasing mid-budget films run by Elizabeth Gabler. But with the shuttering of Fox 2000 following Disney's historic acquisition of Fox, Love, Simon is finding new life as a TV series on the Disney+ streaming service.Variety broke the news that a Love Simon TV series is in the works for Disney+. The TV series would adapt the 2018 film directed by Greg Berlanti and starring Nick Robinson as a teenager who hides his sexual identity from his friends and family.
Berlanti, who has plenty of TV experience as the maestro behind CW's superhero shows Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl, is not involved in the Love, Simon TV adaptation because of his overall deal with Warner Bros., according to Variety. Instead, Disney is eying This is Us showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger to adapt the film to a TV series.
Adapting Love, Simon into a TV series follows a trend of adapting coming-of-age films with an established IP to a TV series, like YouTube's upcoming Edge of Seventeen spin-off series. However, Love, Simon was a much bigger hit than Edge of Seventeen, and even heralded the beginning of an LGBT teen phenomenon on the big and small screen. It's possible instead that this is Disney's plans for the mid-budget films of Fox 2000, which included hits like Life of Pi, Hidden Figures, The Fault in Our Stars, and The Hate U Give. While it's disappointing that the movie industry is becomingly increasingly less varied as mid-budget films disappear from the landscape, at least these stories are finding a home somewhere.
Here is the synopsis for the Love, Simon movie:
Everyone deserves a great love story, but for 17-year-old Simon Spier, it's a little more complicated. He hasn't told his family or friends that he's gay, and he doesn't know the identity of the anonymous classmate that he's fallen for online. Resolving both issues proves hilarious, terrifying and life-changing.