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I've Just Read Diane Ruggiero-Wright's Script For The US Remake Of Misfits

Yesterday, we told that iZombie TV show co-creator/producer and Veronica Mars alumni Diane Ruggiero-Wright was behind the new US remake of Misfits.

Today, we get a look at that first script.

misfits

How does it stand up? Well the language has been toned down, the first UK series began with the memorable "I'm gonna kick you so hard in the c-nt, your mum'll feel it" becomes "I'll kick you to Perth Amboy". And we get more "fricking" and "frigging" from Kelly than from Austin Powers.

But rather than a from-scratch reconceptualisaton of everything, so much feels familiar. The characters are the same, even down to the names, Nathan still a gobshite joker, Kelly still an aggressive chav, Simon still a quiet perving freak, Curtis – now a college footballer rather than a sprinter, Alisha is Alicia, pretty much the same party girl but from a Christian evangelical family. And we have Syd instead of Gary.

Do you remember Gary? No? Well, there's a reason for that but he was in the very first UK episode, a wannabe tough guy controlled by his girlfriend Skylar, and one of the folk on community service.

As Nathan puts it "you know white trash Jiminy Cricket slipped out the birth canal slinging benzos". Yeah, he really hasn't changed. Though he no longer claims to have gotten community service from stealing some pic'n'mix but gummy worms instead. That's about it. He may even still be Irish.

NATHAN (INTO PHONE) (emphatic)
I did not ghost you! It was an Irish good-bye that went on too long! Please! It's just one night! I'll put out!

All with their doomed probation worker Tony in the arse end of nowhere. The Misfits.  We get the massive hail hailstorm.

I have had about enough of this sh–

A PIECE OF HAIL HITS TONY ON THE HEAD

A few more bits of hail hit the pavement. Suddenly, as the misfits and Tony process what is happening, a hail storm unleashes on them. The hail is normal sized at first, but soon, gigantic balls of hail fall from the sky, smashing car windshields, breaking park benches.

TONY
Back inside! Run!

misfits

We even get this bit – used in every promo ever for the original version.

THEN IT HAPPENS — THE MISFITS ARE STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

Everything goes black. We see each misfit suspended in darkness, reacting to the lightning hit in a slow-motion, stylized sequence.

Everyone gets their powers. Tony still goes apeshit, Gary Syd dies, Nathan gets it on with his girlfriend, Tony's graffiti is here, and bodies get buried.

It feel like a different draft of the first British episode, given a rewrite. So much is familiar, but the details differ – Simon abused by his flatmates, Kelly and her sister, Curtis and Alicia's parents, there's a larger extended cast, but they don't distract from the core. So, yes, changes, but not in a way that does damage, explicit language aside. It is a little more PG 13… remember this?

It becomes this

SIMON
I want to f-ck you right now. I want to blow my load on your tits.

What, no "frick"? Slightly less kink and weirdness…

But here's the thing. It's still Misfits. Everything that Howard Overman saw in the original is right here. Now here's hoping they actually cast people who look like people, not movie stars. No perfect teeth, no perfect hair, full of everyone's imperfections.

After all, they are the Misfits.


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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