British Teen Superheroes to Be Americanized

Two years ago, I posted the first ten minutes of the pilot for “Misfits,” a British show about working-class teenagers who acquire superpowers after a freak electrical storm. At the time, I called it “like ‘Heroes,’ but British and not crappy.” The show has since gone on to become a critical and commercial success: it won the BAFTA award for best drama series last year and gained a considerable American audience on Hulu this summer.

You know what that means: TIME TO AMERICANIZE THIS MUTHA. The production company run by Josh Schwartz (creator of “The O.C.” and several other, crappier shows) has acquired the rights to show.

Schwartz will team up with U.K. Misfits creator Howard Overman to write a U.S. translation. There’s no network attached as of yet, but given the response to the original series, it’s hard not to imagine it finding a Stateside TV home…

Schwartz and Overman are foregoing the traditional development process, in which a network buys a pitch from a scribe and later decides whether or not to film a pilot. Instead, the two have opted to write the new Misfits on spec… One advantage of the spec path is that it lets creators develop a pilot without networks nitpicking development details. [Vulture]

Hmmmm… Original creator involved AND no network involvement in the pilot development? I’m downright hopeful that this could be a faithful adaptation. And say what you will about Josh Schwartz, but he made the shows that made Rachel Bilson and Blake Lively famous. That gets you some leeway in my book. Enough leeway to ignore Mischa Barton in that equation.