Image: Christopher Patey
Netflix is the home of the new Shondaland.
Shonda Rhimes is the woman behind the TV series you love. Responsible for Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, and more I think we can certainly say she knows what she’s doing. Now she’s bringing that power and everything that is Shondaland to Netflix.
Shondaland is the storytelling company behind those television series you adore. Founded by Shonda Rhimes and joined by producing partner Betsy Beers, over the last decade Shondaland has earned numerous awards including a Golden Globe, Peabody Award, GLAAD Media Awards, NAACP Image Awards, Producers Guild and an AFI Award.
Rhimes says of the partnership:
“I wanted the new Shondaland to be a place where we expand the types of stories we tell, where my fellow talented creatives could thrive and make their best work and where we as a team come to the office each day filled with excitement.”
Shows in the works include a show focusing on the exploits alleged con artist Anna Delvey, as well as an adaptation of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Warmth of Other Suns.
The projects include the following series (all titles are working titles):
Untitled Shonda Rhimes Project
- Based on the New York Magazine article How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People by Jessica Pressler. Manhattan makes a new friend like no other. But is she the stuff American dreams are made of or is she New York’s biggest con woman? Is it a con if you enjoy being taken?
Untitled Bridgerton Project
- Based on Julia Quinn’s best-selling series of novels, this smart feminist take on Regency England romance unveils the glittering, wealthy, sexual, painful, funny and sometimes lonely lives of the women and men in London’s high society marriage mart as told through the eyes of the powerful Bridgerton family.
The Warmth of Other Suns
- Based on Pulitzer-Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson’s award-winning book of the same name, this powerful groundbreaking series tracks the decades-long migration of African-Americans fleeing the Jim Crow South in search of a better life in the North and the West between 1916 and 1970.
Pick & Sepulveda
- Set in the 1840s against the surreal and sensual backdrop of the then-Mexican state of California, the series tracks the end of an idyllic era there as American forces threaten brutality and war at the border to claim this breathtaking land for its own.
Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change
- Netflix and Shondaland have acquired the rights to Ellen Pao’s groundbreaking memoir detailing her life and career, including the lawsuit she brought against her former employer that sparked intense media scrutiny, shook Silicon Valley to its boys’ club core and presaged the Time’s Up movement.
The Residence
- Netflix and Shondaland have acquired the rights to Kate Andersen Brower’s brilliant nonfiction book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, which offers a vividly accurate insider’s account of White House residence staffers and the upstairs-downstairs lives they share with the First Families at one of the most famous homes in history.
Sunshine Scouts
- In this darkly comedic half-hour series, an apocalyptic disaster spares a rag-tag group of teenage girls at sleepaway camp who must then summon their moxie and survival skills to weather the fallout and ensure all that remains of humanity abides by the Sunshine Scout Law.
Hot Chocolate Nutcracker
- This documentary offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy’s award-winning reimagining of the classic ballet, The Nutcracker. This staged contemporization – with its inclusive cast of all ages and its blend of dance traditions – has further cemented Debbie Allen’s legacy as one of the greatest forces for good in dance.
What do you think? Are you a fan of Shonda Rhimes’ work? Let us know in the comments.
