Kenya Barris Gets Greenlight For Black 'Bewitched' Reboot

Kenya Barris Gets Greenlight For Black ‘Bewitched’ Reboot

If you’re a child of the 70’s, then you may remember the TV show Bewitched.

It starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, who was a woman who had witchcraft powers that enabled her to make life more convenient. Much of the show was centered around her antics with her husband, who wasn’t always supportive of her special skills.

Now the man behind a successful Black sitcom is bringing it back to life, but with a Black women in the lead role. Black-ish creator. Kenya Barris is behind the Bewitched reboot, which has been approved for a pilot but has no stars attached yet.

From Shadowandact.com:

From Barris and black-ish writer and co-producer Yamara Taylor, it would be a “single camera, interracial blended family comedy based on the popular 1960s sitcom of the same name.”

Right now, it currently has a pilot production commitment.

In the Barris/Taylor-written reboot, Samantha is a “hardworking black single mom who happens to be a witch, marries Darren, a white mortal who happens to be a bit of a slacker.

They struggle to navigate their differences as she discovers that even when a black girl is literally magic, she’s still not as powerful as a decently tall white man with a full head of hair in America.”

Barris and Taylor would both be executive producers.

ABC, who originally ran the 1964-1972 series, has been interested in this. If you remember correctly, there have been several attempts to reboot Bewitched over the years — in 2014 both ABC and NBC pursued a reboot from Sony TV and it went to NBC for a pilot production commitment. Another one was in development at CBS in 2011. A film remake was released in 2005 starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, but it didn’t fare well.

It should be noted that a Black Bewitched has already been done – on YouTube. A woman named Lexi wrote and starred in a webseries Ghetto Bewitched that debuted on YouTube in 2015.