Chandler Kinney and Maia Reficco have been cast as the leads in HBO Max’s Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, a dark continuation of the teen mystery series that ran for seven seasons between 2010 and 2017. Based on the books by Sara Shepard, Pretty Little Liars has spawned multiple television shows.
Kinney (Zombies 2) will play Tabby, an aspiring director and horror movie buff hiding a secret of her own. Reficco (Evita) will play Noa, a striving, sardonic track star who's working hard to get her life back to normal after a summer in juvie.
Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin hails from executive producer/writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and co-executive producer/writer Lindsay Calhoon Bring. Lisa Soper will direct the first two episodes of the series. Aguirre-Sacasa, who serves as Chief Creative Officer at Archie Comics, also developed Riverdale and Katy Keene for The CW, as well as Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for Netflix. Michael Grassi, Caroline Baron, and Alloy’s Leslie Morgenstein and Gina Girolamo are also executive producers on Original Sin.
The Pretty Little Liars franchise is on-brand for Aguirre-Sacasa, and a neat new addition to the HBO Max roster. WarnerMedia’s streaming service is in a bit of a pickle, marred by backroom change-ups and only a modest growth in subscribers. WarnerMedia banked everything on its industry-shaking decision to release nearly every Warner Bros film day-and-date on HBO Max (for 30 days), much to the displeasure of longtime studio cohort Christopher Nolan. Despite a steady stream of big-ticket titles such as Godzilla vs Kong and Wonder Woman 1984 — not to mention Zack Snyder’s Justice League — HBO Max still lags behind industry leaders such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. But moody teens in Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin might just attract an untapped demographic.
Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is scheduled to begin production later this summer. No official release date on HBO Max has been announced, so stay tuned to Collider for more on this upcoming series.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Twenty years ago, a series of tragic events almost ripped the blue-collar town of Millwood apart. Now, in the present day, a group of disparate teen girls — a brand-new set of Little Liars — find themselves tormented by an unknown Assailant and made to pay for the secret sin their parents committed two decades ago...as well as their own. In the dark, coming-of-age, horror-tinged drama Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, we find ourselves miles away from Rosewood, but within the existing Pretty Little Liars universe — in a brand-new town, with a new generation of Little Liars.