Rise of the Pink Ladies — Grease prequel series coming to Paramount+ (updated)

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Prequel series Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies sets an April start date.

Updated 10/03/23: The countdown the Grease prequel series continues with a very familiar song.

With Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies less than a month away, streamer Paramount+ are amping up the excitement. They’ve released their own spin on the movie’s famous track ‘Grease is the Word’.

At the drive-in, the four future Pink Ladies take the lead vocals as we meet them and their contemporaries.

The song sets the scene for the show, beginning with Jane (Marisa Davila) who’s just coupled up with Buddy (Jason Schmidt). As the news spreads, we encounter Tricia Fukuhara’s Nancy, Ari Notartomaso’s Cynthia, and Cheyenne Isabel Wells as Olivia. While the Pink Ladies are yet to form, it’s clear that the T Birds are already a gang.

It won’t all be covers however – there are reportedly 31 new songs in the show.

This trailer also presents a student body that is notably more diverse than the film, with showrunner Annabel Oakes telling Entertainment Weekly:

“Any time you do a period piece, you are using a little bit of a modern lens and you’re talking about what’s different and also what hasn’t changed. It’s really interesting to go down both of those paths at once.”

Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies lands at streamer Paramount+ on Thursday April 6th, 2023.

Updated 10/01/23: Following last week’s social media tease, Paramount+ have dropped a teaser trailer for the show. It’s also gained a premiere date of April 6th.

All-singing and dancing, it’s just what we’d expect from a prequel to Grease and looks to be a lot of fun.

The series stars Marisa Davila, Cheyenne Isabel Wells, Ari Notartomaso, Tricia Fukuhara, Shanel Bailey, Madison Thompson (Ozark), Johnathan Nieves, Jason Schmidt, Maxwell Whittington-Cooper and Jackie Hoffman (Glass Onion).

Original music for the show has been original written by Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer Justin Tranter. The showrunner, writer and executive producer is Annabel Oakes (Atypical).

The streamer has also released a poster image to promote the show too:

Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies will run for 10 episodes.

Updated 03/01/23: There’s a new logo reveal for Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies.

It’s been a while since we’ve reported on the Grease prequel show.

The television series will set up the girl gang from the movie. However, set some four years, the story will on new characters; which makes sense given the churn of a high school, as well as avoiding casting actors to recreate familiar faces.

Now, streamer Paramount+ have dropped a logo reveal promo. Naturally, it features one of those famous Pink Lady jackets…

50s music, outcast kids. What’s not to love? We’ll keep you posted when there’s a start date for the show.

Original article (17/07/21) follows…

Rise of the Pink Ladies — Grease prequel series coming to Paramount+

Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies

Prequel series Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies has been ordered by Paramount+ 

Dust off your flares and your wide-collar shirts and get ready to go back to the mid-70s with Rise of the Pink Ladies, a new spin-off series based on the movie Grease.

Tell me more, tell more

So far reports say there will be ten episodes, and the show is set four years before the events of Grease, so while the Pink Ladies are the subject, this is based on new characters, rather than those in the film. Here’s the logline (according to Deadline):

Before rock ‘n’ roll ruled, before the T-Birds were the coolest in the school, four fed-up, outcast girls dare to have fun on their own terms, sparking a moral panic that will change Rydell High forever…

The prequel is written and executive produced by creator Annabel Oakes (Atypical), who also will serve as showrunner. Marty Bowen will executive produce along with Erik Feig.

It’s the one that we want

It’s easy to think of the late ’70s films as being dominated by the arrival of Star Wars, and the explosion of titles, including Star Trek, CE3K, Alien, Superman and everything else. In fact 1977 also brought Annie Hall, Eraserhead, The Spy Who Loved Me and Saturday Night Fever.

Come 1978 and John Travolta was back in Grease alongside Olivia Newton-John, and we had the smash hit of the summer. Both films had massive cultural impact, even if the audiences had little overlap.

Even if musicals aren’t to everyone’s taste, Grease has been shown a lot on TV, and most people will have seen it at some stage. We don’t know of the new show is a musical, or not, but given the long track record of success with high-school shows, we suspect this will do well.

We’ll keep you posted.