Animated comedy genius Mike Hollingsworth (supervising director, BoJack Horseman, Tuca & Bertie, Inside Job) is attempting to give a new life to the classic live-action sitcom The Golden Girls with an animated sci-fi twist. The animator has unveiled a five-minute pilot for Golden Girls 3033, which transports our heroines far into the future with all the old conflicts.
The concept takes audio from an original episode of the hit Susan Harris show (which ran on NBC for seven seasons from 1985 to 1992) and uses animation to bring Blanche (Rue McClanahan), Dorothy (Bea Arthur), Rose (Betty White) and Sophia (Estelle Getty) into the Miami of the year 3033, where they have discovered Ponce De León’s Fountain of Youth (and Sophia has been turned into an even more formidable robot).
“I was just riffing in the directors’ room at BoJack, like, well, of course, I’m also working on a show — it’s The Golden Girls, (but) they found the fountain of youth, and now they’re in the future.’ It made all the directors laugh, so I would return to it conversationally,” Hollingsworth told IndieWire in an interview. “Then I realized I’m having so much more fun talking about this ridiculous (show) and ideas for it — like Dorothy’s ex-husband, Stan (played by Herb Edelman), is a squid alien — than I was while trying to pitch what they were asking for.”
Hollingsworth took advantage of the pandemic shutdowns to work on the pilot, which he plans to evolve into a half-hour series crafted by a team of writers and animators, with greater representation of the show’s LGBTQ+ fans in the room. His brother, Bryan Hollingsworth, created the character designs for the pilot.
TBS was interested in the series, but since Warner Bros. Discovery shut down the Turner Networks original programming division, the director is hoping to attract a new outlet; preferably a major streamer like Disney+ or Hulu, he told IndieWire.
