Summary

• Legally Blonde prequel series announced for Prime Video, exploring Elle Woods in high school.
• Series created by Laura Kittrell with backing from producers like Reese Witherspoon.
• The casting for Elle Woods in the show remains uncertain, but is essential for the show's success.

A Legally Blonde prequel series titled Elle has officially been ordered by Prime Video. The property has gone through multiple iterations, including a musical and a cancelled TV series. Based on a novel by Amanda Brown, the best-known version of the franchise is the Reese Witherspoon film adaptation of Legally Blonde, which was released in 2001.

Per Prime Video, a Legally Blonde prequel series has officially been announced. The series is created by Laura Kittrell, who will also serve as an executive producer and the showrunner. Other producers on the show include original Legally Blonde star Witherspoon, along with Marc Platt, Lauren Neustadter, and Lauren Kisilevsky. The series will follow protagonist Elle Woods as she navigates high school, in a series that explains her backstory and how she became the vibrant person she is known to be. Both Witherspoon and Amazon MGM Studios head of television spoke excitedly about the series in quotes realized below:

Witherspoon: I truly couldn’t be more excited about this series! Fans will get to know how Elle Woods navigated her world as a teenager with her distinct personality and ingenuity, in ways that only our beloved Elle could do. What could be better than that?! I’m extremely grateful to the incredible teams at Prime Video and Hello Sunshine - along with our amazing writer Laura Kittrell - for making this dream of mine come true. Legally Blonde is back!

Vernon Sanders: One of the most quotable, iconic, and beloved characters that is ingrained in the fabric of Hollywood history has to be Elle Woods, and we are honored to bring her origin story to our global Prime Video customers. Reese and Hello Sunshine’s vision for this series, coupled with Laura Kittrell’s winning voice, made this show completely undeniable.

Who Should Play Elle Woods In The Legally Blonde Show?

Witherspoon Is Synonymous With Elle Woods

What Witherspoon and Sanders are saying about Elle Woods — from her quotability to her “distinct personality” — are what makes her a likable character, but they are also what will make Legally Blonde difficult to adapt for TV. The series has been made so synonymous with Witherspoon and so iconic that the existing Legally Blonde entities will be hard to top. The series will be subject to harsh comparisons between the TV show, the Legally Blonde movies, and the hit stage musical adaptation from 2007.

What the Legally Blonde show will need to succeed is a great lead actress to play Elle Woods. A great choice for the role would be 2024’s Mean Girls musical star Reneé Rapp. Rapp could be a good fit due to her positively-reviewed TV experience on The Sex Lives of College Girls and shares a similar look to Witherspoon. She could also be the right actor to cast if the show follows in the footsteps of the musical version.

Perhaps a more obvious choice for Elle would be Sydney Sweeney. While Sweeney is 26 years old and arguably has aged out of a high school version of Elle Woods, she will still play high school student Cassie in Euphoria season 3, and could for a younger age range. Sweeney is also a highly sought-after actress and physically fits the part of a surface-level dumb blonde (albeit, as Elle Woods, with much more underneath the surface). As the Legally Blonde TV show develops, it will be interesting to see who Prime Video lands on for their lead.

The 2001 movie version of Legally Blonde is available to watch on Max.

Source: Prime Video