ABC to Bring Witches of Eastwick to Prime Time

Posted by bob in News on August 12th, 2008

John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick is boiling up a new incarnation, this time as an hour-long series for ABC.  The pilot is being written by Maggie Friedman (Dawson’s Creek) and is expected for mid-season of fall 2009 airing.  No cast has been announced as yet. Three women bond over witchcraft to replace the men in their lives but manage to conjure up a man more devilish than any of their former partners.

The novel has previously been a feature film, released in 1987 and starred Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer.  It did very well despite criticism of Nicholson being even more over the top than usual.

Since then, there have been other attempts to turn the novel and film into a series starting with Warner Bros. Television in 1992 when writers Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) produced a pilot that starred Catherine Mary Stewart, Julia Campbell, Ally Walker and Michael Siberri.

Fox and Warner Bros. TV tried again in 2002 although that project was dubbed just Eastwick. This attempt was from writers Jon Cowan (Bionic Woman) and Robert Rovner (Crossing Jordan) and rather than be about the women — Lori Loughlin, Marcia Cross, and Kelly Rutherford — it was to be about their sons.

More successful was the musical version, which premiered in England from producer Cameron Mackintosh, and was performed most recently last year in the states.