We spent so much time talking about Sex and the City last year and the year before. It was all because of the drama over whether the women of SATC would do a third film, a film no one asked for and no one wanted. Kim Cattrall took one for the team and turned it down, and Sarah Jessica Parker threw a sh-t fit about it, and that was the story for MONTHS. As it turns out, the SATC 3 script was already written and it would have involved killing off Mr. Big (Chris Noth) and spending the entire movie with Carrie dealing with her grief and dating again. Which sounds f–king awful. Thankfully – I guess? – Candace Bushnell has some other ideas. Bushnell wrote the columns/book from which SATC was based, and now Bushnell is writing a new book AND TV show about ladies in their 50s, dating in New York. CB discussed some Bushnell’s promotion for the book a few weeks ago, and now Bushnell has already sold the rights for the TV show based on the book (which hasn’t even come out yet).

One of the most iconic comedy series of the past two decades, HBO’s Sex and the City, is getting a followup, which examines love and dating after 50. In a competitive situation, Paramount Television and Anonymous Content have acquired the rights to Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s upcoming book Is There Still Sex in the City? to develop as a TV series. Bushnell will write the pilot script and serve as an executive producer on the project, along with Liza Chasin from 3dot Productions and Robyn Meisinger from Anonymous Content, where Chasin’s 3dot is under a first-look TV production deal.

Is There Still Sex in the City is set to be released by Grove Press on August 6, 2019. It follows Bushnell’s piercing, sly, and sometimes heartbreaking look at sex, dating, and friendship in New York City after 50. Set between the Upper East Side of Manhattan and a country enclave known as The Village, the book looks at love and life from all angles—marriage and children, divorce and bereavement, as well as the very real pressures on women to maintain their youth and have it all.

“It didn’t used to be this way. At one time, fifty something meant the beginning of retirement—working less, spending more time on your hobbies, with your friends, who like you were sliding into a more leisurely lifestyle,” said Bushnell. “In short, retirement age folks weren’t meant to do much of anything but get older and a bit heavier. They weren’t expected to exercise, start new business ventures, move to a different state, have casual sex with strangers, and start all over again. But this is exactly what the lives of a lot of fifty- and sixty something women look like today and I’m thrilled to be reflecting the rich, complexity of their reality on the page and now on the screen.”

[From Deadline]

This is an exciting development because… I feel like Bushnell is creating a whole new world of female friendship and character development. Even though SATC made her rich, her original vision was taken away from her and replaced with the Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker Sh-t Show. It will be interesting to see how the book and new TV series will go without MPK and SJP’s influences. I bet it will be more realistic. But still fun, hopefully.

Photos courtesy of WENN.