From Living Single to Sex and the City, it’s abundantly clear that The Golden Girls has influenced decades of television and served as a template for some of our most beloved shows. While a reboot at this point would be virtually impossible (the final ‘Golden Girl’, Betty White passed away late in 2021), it has not stopped animator & BoJack Horseman supervising director Mike Hollingsworth from crafting a brand new re-imagination of Dorothy, Sophia, Rose & Blanche and it is out of this world-literally!
Revealed exclusively to IndieWire, Golden Girls 3033 shows our favorite Miami ladies living in a futuristic world but thankfully, still residing together in Miami. A futuristic theme song quickly shows us that this iteration of The Golden Girls has gone intergalactic, with some of our favorite scenes getting a 3033 update (Blanche emerges from her bedroom followed by a parade of what looks to be alien-esque doppelgängers of herself)! Dororhy’s ex-husband Stan (portrayed by Herb Edelman) also pops into the episode (as he was known to do during the show’s original run) and looks…decidedly different this time around, but has a classic “Stanley” issue he needs help resolving. The official synopsis reads: “In 1513 Ponce de León sailed to Florida in search of The Fountain of Youth. His inability to find it is said to have driven him mad. The fountain would remain undiscovered for another 480 years. That’s when four retired women, Dorthy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia, found it on the grounds of their senior living facility in Miami”.
As for what inspired Hollingsworth to reimagine our favorite South Florida seniors in a brand new (and animated) iteration, Hollingsworth’s answer was easy. He told Indie Wire in part, “Out of frustration, I just started coming up with the craziest ideas, like the most ridiculous concepts. I was just riffing in the directors’ room at ‘BoJack,’ like, “Well, of course, I’m also working on a show — it’s ‘The Golden Girls,’ [but] they find the fountain of youth, and now they’re in the future.” It made all the directors laugh, so I would return to it conversationally. […] “Then I realized I’m having so much more fun talking about this ridiculous [show] and ideas for it — like Dorothy’s ex-husband, Stan, is a squid alien — than I was while trying to pitch what they were asking for. […] It’s ultimately a celebration of the material”. While Hollingsworth sees the episodes as running 30 minutes in length (the same as the original series, he guarantees more LGBTQ voices “in the drivers seat” should the show be picked up (while there has been network interest, Hollingsworth’s ideal place to showcase Golden Girls 3033 would be on a streamer like Hulu. He told EW “The show that I’m pitching could just be the beginning of the whole Golden Girls-a-verse,” he said. “Like the Marvel Universe, but with The Golden Girls.”
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