This pilot season has been chock full of projects based on popular movies, comic books and TV shows, and on Wednesday, Netflix announced it had jumped on the bandwagon. The subscription streaming service has signed on to create a live action version of Richie Rich that is set to begin airing very soon. Richie Rich is expected to land at Netflix very soon, with new episodes premiering in early 2015.
Netflix traditionally has opted for smaller episode orders, but they’ve definitely signed on for more with Richie Rich. The series has nabbed a 21-episode order from the streaming service and will follow our titular hero as he adjusts to life as the richest kid in the world. The kid starring in Richie Rich is Jake Brennan, an actor known for Dark Skies and one-off stints on Criminal Minds and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. This kid has money to burn.
The series is being brought to the small screen by AwesomenessTV, and Brian Robbins, Tim Pollock and Jeff Hodsden will serve as executive producers.
Netflix’s announcement notes that Richie Rich will be a modernized version of the story—a story that has been retold over and over again. The character debuted as a Harvey Comic character way back in 1953. Those who are familiar with the Richie Rich character should also know that the character was the lead in a series with the same title that aired in the early 1980s. Although that was a cartoon, Rich did eventually become a live action character in the form of a Macaulay Caulkin film that hit theaters way back in 1994.
While the Culkin version followed Rich as a kid living in a nice home courtesy of his billionaire father, Richard, it seems like Netflix’s Richie Rich will have the kid creating the fortune. The official plot synopsis says that Richie will make a trillion dollars by creating “cool” green technology. After making his trillions, he’ll move into a sweet mansion and pretty much hang out and do whatever he wants, which will include “exploring Antarctica, making a movie with his friends and meeting famous celebrities.” Sounds realistic.
Obviously, this is going to be a youth-oriented series for Netflix, so I don’t expect it to have the most thoughtful of plots, but it fits in with the other remakes and reboots Netflix has going on in its lineup (which includes The Magic School Bus reboot), as well as the overall TV trend of remaking popular projects from the past. This season, some of the projects that are in the works include reworked versions of Minority Report and Big. Heck, even Shutter Island is being looked at to return in TV form. Unlike those projects, Richie Rich is 100% moving forward, although we hope that you have your kids watch the original versions before jumping into Netflix’s new show.
