The Brady Bunch Gets a Reboot

Who would have known that a show based on today’s modern families would be a spin-off of a program that has been off the air for nearly 40 years?

Yes, that’s right: Vince Vaughan’s production company is currently preparing a script for a possible Brady Bunch reboot.

The original Brady Bunch sitcom ran from 1969 to 1974 and centered around a widower, Mike Brady, and his new wife, Carol Ann Martin. Each spouse joined the marriage with three children: Mike with three sons and Carol with three daughters. While creators wanted Carol to be a divorcée, the network refused to tackle such a taboo topic, so her previous marriage was never discussed. Things have definitely changed, and now divorce is fine for television. It’s also fine for Bobby Brady.

Mike Mariano (who is behind Raising Hope and My Name Is Earl) is currently working on a script that follows a grown-up Bobby Brady (the youngest Brady boy). Bobby is a divorced father who remarries a divorced woman with children of her own (sound familiar?). To change it up, Bobby and his new wife have a child together, plus their ex-spouses are still involved in their lives. I’m getting a Step By Step meets Reba vibe, but both Collider and Deadline report it will be multi-camera format like The Office or Modern Family.

Deadline reports that Vaughan came up with the idea for the reboot. Vaughan, Mariano, Peter Billingsley, Vaughan’s sister Victoria, and Lloyd Schwartz (son of the original series creator Sherwood Schwartz) will be executive producers. This project is being taken on by Vaughan’s Wild West Picture Show Productions, whose show Sullivan & Son is now on TBS.

Gawkernotes that the show is “still in the early script stage and could still be scrapped,” but Collider thinks that CBS will do everything they can with this project because it is a “high-profile property.” If the idea does become a show, Deadline reports that it will likely get a tweaked version of the old theme song, similar to how the original Hawaii Five-0 theme song was modernized for the current reboot.

This isn’t the only classic reboot in the works. Bryan Singer is reportedly working on a modern version of The Munsters for NBC. Other successful reboots currently on the air include 90210, Dallas, and, of course, Hawaii Five-0. The Brady Bunch has proven to be a success since the original show went off the air. There have already been spinoffs, a musical, TV movie reunions, a short-lived ’90s reboot, and a movie franchise based on a parody of the series.

Are you excited for a Brady reboot? As played-out as these reboots are getting, a more complicated, modern take on The Brady Bunch might be refreshing. If Raising Hope, My Name Is Earl, and Sullivan & Son are any indication of what the executive production team will bring to the new project, I think we can expect a bit more brashness from this modern blended family.