Little Miss Sunshine star Abigail Breslin is set to play the iconic role of Baby in a TV remake of classic 1980s movie Dirty Dancing.
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Lionsgate TV, which would produce the show for ABC, was set to film in the Asheville area after it received $4 million in grant reimbursements from the North Carolina Film Office in March.
The new made-for-television movie from Lionsgate TV is described as a three-hour event with a script written by Jessica Sharzer, an Emmy-nominated writer from “American Horror Story”. Music will be done by Adam Anders and Peer Astrom, both of whom worked on Glee, while Andy Blankenbuehler from Broadway’s Hamilton will choreograph.
The project is executive produced by Allison Shearmur of the “Hunger Games” franchise and Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the screenplay for the movie.
Dirty Dancing fans, lend us your ears.
The actress will step into the role of innocent, intelligent high school grad Frances “Baby” Houseman-originally played by Jennifer Grey-who summers with her affluent family in the Catskill Mountains and falls for the resort’s working-class, bad boy dance instructor. The role of Johnny has not still been announced. There was a feature reboot in the works with Kenny Ortega attached to direct, which was put on hold in 2012. A short-lived 1988 TV series, starring Patrick Cassidy and Melora Hardin, also failed to hit with audiences. A re-imagining, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, was released in 2014.
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News of ABC’s “Dirty Dancing” remake comes less than one week after NBC aired a live production of “The Wizards of Oz” called “The Wiz Live!” that garnered 11.5 million viewers.
