Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage – the duo that brought the Gossip Girl YA books to the screen as a hit series for the CW – are working on a TV series adaptation for another popular YA series.
Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley book series is getting another TV series adaptation, a co-production between CBS Studios and Paramount TV Studios. The best-selling books have been previously adapted into the TV series Sweet Valley High back in 1994, which aired a total of four seasons.
Sweet Valley is the story of Elizabeth Wakefield, a girl who grew up in Sweet Valley, the picture-perfect town in California that everyone dreams of growing up in. Life was sweet for Elizabeth, until her missing twin sister Jessica suddenly reappears, reigniting a lifelong rivalry between the two. It’s up to Enid Ruiz, the new girl, to figure out if someone or something is behind the town’s mysteries, and to convince the twins that setting aside their differences is the only way to shed light on Sweet Valley’s darkest secrets.
Ashley Wigfield, writer-producer on HBO Max’s reboot of the Gossip Girl series, will be writing for the upcoming Sweet Valley series adaptation. Wigfield will also be executive producing the upcoming show alongside Schwartz, Savage and Lis Rowinski, as well as Chernin Entertainment’s Peter Chernin and Jenno Topping.
The Sweet Valley book series began in 1983 and went on to publish a total of 181 books in the next 20 years. Pascal was the attributed author for all of the books, but similar to the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys novels, Sweet Valley also had multiple uncredited authors who contributed to writing some of the books.
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