It was a big week for Pretty Little Liars showrunner I. Marlene King, and a big week for fans of the show who aren’t ready to let go of regular appointments with the show’s stars. A few days after Freeform announced that it was developing a pilot for a PLL spinoff called The Perfectionists, which sees Sasha Pieterse and Janel Parrish reprising their roles of Alison DeLaurentis and Mona Vanderwaal, respectively, it’s now being reported that Shay Mitchell is also getting a new show on the network. Like The Perfectionists, The Heiresses will be produced by King and based on a novel from Sara Shepard, who wrote the Pretty Little Liars books. Following the PLL finale, Mitchell started a production company (with the incredibly Shay Mitchell–esque name of Amore & Vita) and signed a multi-year development deal with Warner Bros. TV, which produced Liars with Freeform. (King also has a development deal in place with WBTV.) In Heiresses — described as “a family soap with a mystery twist†— Mitchell will play a member of the Saybrook family, which heads up a storied diamond concern. They’re extremely wealthy but plagued by misfortune, and the show opens a year after a fatal crash “drove a wedge between the once-inseparable diamond empire heiresses.â€
If that sounds a little like PLL, just wait. After the “unspeakable tragedy brings the cousins back together, they create a truly unbreakable bond. They set to solve the mystery of who wants the Saybrook family dead before one of them is the next target.†So, it’s a nighttime soap in which a tragic and surprising death first shatters a tight knit group of women before bringing them back together stronger than ever to solve a murder for the purposes of getting closure and preventing their own deaths. Swap in “high school friends†for “diamond empire heiresses†and you’re back in Rosewood, which is all to say, this is a PLL fan’s dream. It’s fortunate for Freeform and WBTV marketing that Mitchell already looks like the heiress to a diamond empire in most publicity photos. You can also see her starring in the upcoming Lifetime series You, as well as the horror movie Cadaver.