The creators ofWednesdayclearly love a good mystery, and perhaps that’s why they tried so hard to make aMiss Marpleprequel series.Alfred GoughandMiles Millar, who previously explored a younger Superman story withSmallville, have found new success with the release ofWednesdayon Netflix. The series follows Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams, exploring the mysteries of Nevermore Academy with a whodunnit element at the center of the story.
Before getting theAddams Familyrights, Gough and Millar had another kind of mystery series in mind that they wanted to tackle. In a new interview withTHR, the two reveal that a previous plan was to develop a prequel series about the Agatha Christie character Miss Marple, who has appeared in many various books, films, and TV shows. The series never came to fruition, though as Millar explains, the whodunnit aspect that intrigued them seems to have carried over into theirWednesdayshow.
“Well, we tried for a long time to get a young Miss Marple, and maybe that influenced us with the whodunnit element here, but it’s certainly something that was intriguing as a character who you always see. There’s something about whodunnits and mysteries that it’s a great puzzle for a writer to solve. So, I think that was something, to see how she evolved into sort of the nosy old lady in Agatha Christie was something we talked about for a while.”
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Miss Marple Was Almost Rebooted
Jane Marple, aka Miss Marple, was created by legendary author Agatha Christie. She is depicted as an elderly woman who acts as a consulting detective, first appearing in print in 1927 and going on to be portrayed many times in different mediums. Angela Lansbury played Miss Marple in the 1980 film The Mirror Crack’d following Margaret Rutherford’s run in the role in a series of films in the 1960s.
The character has also been featured in her own TV shows, with Joan Hickson taking the role in the BBC’sMiss Marpleseries that ran from 1984 to 1992. Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie would later share the role for ITV’sAgatha Christie’s Marple, another long running-series that began in 2004 and concluded in 2013.
Meanwhile, the story of Miss Marple continues on in literature. Earlier this year, Jane Marple returned inMarple: Twelve New Mysteries, a collection of short stories following the titular mystery solver. Perhaps the prequel TV show wasn’t meant to be, but Miss Marple lives on.
