Every nineties kid’s favorite non-conformist will soon be making her return to television. MTV’s 1997-2002 series “Daria” is set to reboot with “Daria & Jodie,” written by Grace Edwards of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and “Inside Amy Schumer” fame.
Amidst the new wave of online streaming services and exclusive pay-for-purchase content, MTV is launching MTV Studios as an online SVOD (subscription video on demand) platform. MTV recently rebooted “Total Request Live” and “Jersey Shore” and is in talks to also reboot “The Real World” and “Made.”
“Daria & Jodie” is currently being network shopped to online platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Apple. Says a press release, “These two smart young women, Daria Morgendorffer and one of her closest friends Jodie Landon, take on the world with their signature satirical voice while deconstructing popular culture, social classes, gender and race.”
The original “Daria” was the longest-running MTV animated series, airing 65 episodes over five years. The show premiered to a post-“Beavis and Butt-Head” MTV, which president of the network Judy McGrath noted “didn’t have any smart people, or women, or girls.” To counteract this, “Beavis and Butt-Head” writer created Daria Morgendorffer specifically for his show and eventually MTV granted her a spinoff.
Network president Chris McCarthy told the Hollywood Reporter, “We want to create great stories and let this live on. We have one of the largest youth libraries. In the first 30 years [of MTV] nobody was making cable content, so we had to make it ourselves. So much of our history has been about looking forward and not looking back. We stopped and thought that we were leaving something behind that is way more valuable than we realized. Once we started talking to people, they got really excited about how important these characters and franchises were to them. Daria was a good example.”
“Daria” was MTV’s last successful animated series, as each show that followed rarely survived for more than one season.
Watch a clip from the show where Daria explains her nonchalant nature and refusal to smile below.
