It was way back before the underrated Jennifer's Body that Diablo Cody announced her plans for a newly revivified Sweet Valley High movie. Since then there's been little in the way of information, but out on the** Young Adult** publicity trail, Cody has confirmed that the new adventures of Francine Pascal's twin heroines are still in the works.
"That is moving forward," she confirmed to The Playlist. "I can't freely talk about it, but it's closer to reality than ever."
Sweet Valley High is, of course, a phenomenally successful series of children's books (pushing two hundred volumes currently) about Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield. Jessica is the cheerleader and Elizabeth is the bookworm; they're both blondes with blue-green eyes and perfect size ten figures, as readers were reminded in every freakin' volume. They go to school and have dramas. In Sweet Valley. At Sweet Valley High. There was a TV series in the 1990s that the BBC used to show on Saturday mornings during Going Live (or was it Live and Kicking?).
We might have expected a barbed and satirical reimagining from Juno-writer Cody and her producing partner Jason Reitman. Or if not that, there was the possibility that she'd pick up the twins as they near their thirties, as the rebooted novels attempted this year.
Not so. "I want it to be wonderfully nostalgic," says Cody. "I want it to be to the '80s what American Graffiti was to the early '60s. I want it to be looking back on a really cool time and enjoying yourself and I want it to be glamorous and colourful and bubblegum and a feast for the senses. That's my plan." So the flashbacks in Never Been Kissed meets a girly version of Armie Hammer in The Social Network. Or something.
Young Adult is out in the UK on February 10, and Cody's directorial debut Lamb Of God is currently in pre-production.