Credit: UniversalAngela Lansbury is one of the greatest Disney icons, and her most famous role will be getting a much-needed update. Sadly, Disney will not be behind the reboot, but instead, Universal Pictures.
Angela Lansbury is most familiar to Disney fans from two projects. The first is Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), a live-action/animation hybrid musical in which her World War II-era witch fights anthropomorphic cartoon animals and Nazis and ultimately finds a family in a group of misfits.
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Even more notably, Angela Lansbury teamed up with Disney for Beauty and the Beast (1991), one of the most acclaimed Disney Renaissance films. As the matronly teapot Mrs. Potts, Lansbury sang the film’s titular theme song (written by Disney Legends Howard Ashman and Alan Menken). The song has since been covered innumerable times by the likes of Ariana Grande and Celine Dion, and serves as one of the company’s de facto anthems.
Between those two Disney films, Angela Lansbury starred in one of the most long-running and successful television shows of all time, Murder, She Wrote.
The CBS crime drama starred Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, a novelist and amateur detective who encountered a truly horrifying number of murders in the small town of Cabot Cove, Maine. While Lansbury was not the original envisioned star (Jean Stapleton turned it down), it went on to become perhaps her defining role.
Over the course of 12 seasons and 264 episodes, Angela Lansbury was nominated for 10 Golden Globes (winning four) and a record number of Primetime Emmys. The show still lives on in syndication, but finally, Universal Pictures is actually giving it the reboot treatment. Sadly, the legendary actress passed away at the age of 96 in 2022, and will not be attached to the reboot.
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Per Variety, a Murder, She Wrote film is in development, with writers Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo working on the project. However, because of the ongoing Writers Guild of America strikes, it appears the film script is on pause until the union and studios can come to terms.
Can you imagine a Murder, She Wrote film that does not star Angela Lansbury? Let us know in the comments below!