Newly branded Paramount Network adapts beloved movies for television
Viacom reinvents Spike TV by chasing cinematic series that appeal to wider audience
LOS ANGELES— In September, the cast and crew of the TV series Heathers, a reimagining of the (very) dark and violent comedy from 1989, were hard at work in the Chatsworth area of the San Fernando Valley creating an updated vision of the film’s fictional Westerburg High. For fans of the original, the effect was both familiar and dizzying.
There were metal detectors at the school’s entrance painted in the primary colours of the big-shouldered blazers worn by the first team of Heathers, the clique of withering Queen Bees who rule the school. In the halls were vending machines selling Big Fun chips, a nod to the film’s goofy boy band with sage musical advice (“Don’t do it”) about teenage suicide.
Even Shannen Doherty, a scrunchie-wearing mean girl in the original, was here, shooting a scene for the final episode of the series, in which she plays someone who should be dead but unexpectedly isn’t. The series, which debuts in March, is part of Viacom’s transformation of the formerly bro-friendly Spike TV into Paramount Network. Cinematic is the buzzword executives keep using to describe the newly branded network, which was set to go live last week.
Besides adaptations of other beloved movies in the Paramount vault (like The First Wives Club, which starred Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler and is getting the half-hour comedy treatment), there are series that feel like big movies ( Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner as the patriarch of a ranching clan) and ones that feature stars best known from movies (notably, Michael Shannon and Alicia Silverstone). And the network’s logo has the same iconic mountain and stars as the Paramount movie studio.
“We’re kind of leaning into the 100 years of the movie studio,” said Keith Cox, the network’s president for development.
The rebranding comes with steep challenges. There’s no shortage of alternatives in this streaming age of Peak TV, and a mainstream network with advertising will be hard-pressed to compete with the commercialfree HBO and Netflix, which Kevin Kay, the network president, said are two of the Paramount Network’s main competitors.
Also, enticing big-name talent to a fledgling network with no track record is hard enough, let alone one that began life airing WWE bouts, Baywatch reruns and specials with names like “The 100 Most Irresistible Women.”
When Viacom started Spike in 2003 as “The First Network for Men,” advertising from video games and male-skewing action movies was plentiful. But as those revenue streams dried up, at least for a modestly rated cable channel like Spike, the network pursued a broader audience, swapping shows like Impact Wrestling for programs like Lip Sync Battle and Tut.
Still, the Spike moniker kept the network from truly being seen as a general-audience destination.
Cue the name change. The reinvention also fit it in with the corporate decision under a new chief executive to focus on six of Viacom’s bigger brands (BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., and now Paramount), at the expense of its smaller ones (TV Land, CMT, VH1 and Logo).
Paramount Network, which bills itself as “television’s destination for premium entertainment and storytelling,” will showcase original programming (about a third of the schedule), supplemented by TV series and feature films culled from the Viacom and Paramount vaults ( Pitch Perfect, The Devil Wears Prada).
The network was set to begin its new life with a live episode of Lip Sync Battle on Jan. 18, followed on Wednesday with its first big offering, Waco, a miniseries about the botched siege of the Branch Davidian compound in 1993. The show epitomizes the network’s chase for the cinematic, with grand vistas; a fully reconstructed Texas compound; and name actors, including Taylor Kitsch ( Friday Night Lights) as David Koresh, and Shannon as the FBI hostage negotiator tasked with bringing him in.
Inhabiting the role of that embattled cult leader, accused pedophile and wannabe rocker took its toll, Kitsch admitted. “It took two months to come out of it,” he said. “That, and counselling.”
Later this year comes Yellowstone, created and directed by Taylor Sheridan ( Hell or High Water) and starring Costner, who did not come cheap. The network is paying him half a million dollars an episode. The new name of the network probably helped lure Costner, too. “I’m not sure if he shows up for Spike,” Kay said.
( Waco and Yellowstone were highprofile entries from the Weinstein Co. But since the raft of allegations of sexual harassment against Harvey Weinstein, all traces of the Weinstein name have been scrubbed from the credits, though the company still has a financial stake in the shows.)
One of the biggest departures for former Spike lovers will be Heathers, which veers wildly from the original. In the new series, Doherty’s character, Heather Duke, is a gay male, while Heather NcNamara is now African-American. And the leader of the crew, Heather Chandler, is no longer a svelte blond but a brunette self-described “plus-sized girl.”
Despite the changes, there will still be frequent nods to the 1989 movie for the fiercely loyal “superfans” of the original, said Jason Micallef, the series creator and showrunner.