HBO Max’s eagerly-awaited Gossip Girl reboot will have to be eagerly awaited a while longer. The new series, originally scheduled to make its debut by fall 2020, has been pushed until 2021 due to the coronavirus-caused global production shutdown. HBO Max chief content officer Kevin Reilly confirmed the news in this week’s edition of Buffering, Vulture’s newsletter devoted to the streaming TV business. “They hadn’t even started production yet; they were in pre-production and ready to roll,†Reilly said of the reboot. Reilly offered no timetable for when the show might start filming, but even if shooting commences in mid- to late- summer— a target timetable being talked about by many studios—it now won’t premiere on Max until 2021.
Gossip Girl is hardly the only scripted series being delayed because of the pandemic, of course. Multiple broadcast and cable series scheduled for fall or summer launches (like FX’s Pose and HBO’s Succession) now seem unlikely to return in 2020 (though there have been no official announcements.) And at HBO Max, Reilly says the Kaley Cuoco–led series The Flight Attendant has also been delayed until “later in the fall†or 2021. “Things that would have been really meaningful and high profile have gotten pushed back,†Reilly says, calling it “really disappointing†not to have some signature shows available during Max’s first two waves of content. Nonetheless, HBO Max will still be packed with first-run series during its first six months. It’s debuting next week with a new Anna Kendrick-led romantic dramedy and a talk show starring Elmo, and it’s on track to release between 30 and 40 scripted and unscripted originals by the end of the year, Reilly said.
Writer/showrunner  Joshua Safran (most recently creator of Netflix’s Soundtrack) and original creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are exec producing the 2020 version of Gossip Girl, which picks up eight years after the CW series left off. The cast includes Emily Alyn Lind, Whitney Peak, Eli Brown, Johnathan Fernandez, and Jason Gotay, along with Tavi Gevinson, Thomas Doherty, Adam Chanler-Berat, and Zion Moreno. Kristen Bell is once again on board as the narrator.
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