By the time the new Mean Girls hits theaters, the original comedy hit will be 20 years old. I’ll let that sink in for a minute. Yes, you’re old, too. Anyway, something people of a certain are having to get used to increasingly are musical adaptations of movies we used to love. We already have The Color Purple out there performing well at the box office and possibly earning accolades. And like it, this new Mean Girls is based on an acclaimed Broadway musical, meaning it will be the same movie, while also a very different one.
So the story remains the same, the characters are the same, and so are a lot of the jokes. But the cast is different, shows more cultural diversity, and there is a lot more music this time around.
The cast features Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, Jaquel Spivey, Avantika, Bebe Wood, Christopher Briney, Jenna Fischer, Busy Philipps, Ashley Park, Tina Fey, and Tim Meadows. Fey, who wrote the original screenplay, returns to write this new take, joined by directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.
Here’s the synopsis: From the comedic mind of Tina Fey comes a new twist on the modern classic, MEAN GIRLS. New student Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is welcomed into the top of the social food chain by the elite group of popular girls called “The Plastics,” ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp) and her minions Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika). However, when Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), she finds herself prey in Regina’s crosshairs. As Cady sets to take down the group’s apex predator with the help of her outcast friends Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey), she must learn how to stay true to herself while navigating the most cutthroat jungle of all: high school.
Mean Girls opens in theaters on January 12th.
