Remakin' Rob Thomas

Was a little too busy yesterday to get around to the double shot of Rob Thomas-related news: the CW has hired him to write a "Beverly Hills, 90210" spin-off/remake/sequel, while ABC finally gave the go-ahead for him to make a pilot for the long-discussed (around here, anyway) "Cupid" remake.

No doubt the two are related -- I'm assuming ABC heard about Thomas' "90210" deal and quickly moved to take "Cupid" from script to pilot -- and if both networks try to take these pilots to series, "Cupid" would have contractual priority for Thomas' services because he started working on it first. (Though that wouldn't doom the "90210" remake; Thomas could either try to do both, ala Josh Schwartz with "Chuck" and "Gossip Girl" this year, or else hand "90210" off to someone else.)

I'll cop to a certain amount of "90210" nostalgia, as those characters (but not actors) were all my age -- or, at least, they were after the producers had everybody but David Silver repeat a grade without anyone noticing or commenting on it. It was cheeseball as hell, sincere to a fault, and the best performance in the show's history probably came from Tiffani-Amber Thiessen (future Oscar winner Hilary Swank got fired after a season because they didn't think she had "it"), yet if I pass a rerun while channel-surfing, I can usually identify the season within seconds, and if I actually put it on during the opening titles, I'm pretty much stuck for the rest of the hour. I'm not proud of it but I imagine slightly younger viewers feel the same way about "Saved by the Bell" or "Dawson's Creek" (or, one day, "One Tree Hill").

Rob showed with "Veronica Mars" that he could tell high school stories dealing with the standard topics in a smart, involving way (though he'd obviously have to ditch the noir), and Schwartz showed with "The O.C." that there are other fresh ways to approach this kind of material, so if that remake goes forward, I'd definitely be interested. No idea whether it'll be a remake, or a sequel where one or two of the characters are the kids of original "90210"-ers, ala the new "DeGrassi." (How old would Andrea's kid be by now? Gabrielle Carteris would probably come cheap and not be a headache, and they could still deal with the class-consciousness stuff, since Andrea was always ambivalent about going to that school.)

As for the "Cupid" remake, it'll be set in LA to allow for stunt-casting. (You may remember Rob saying that the network was always pushing him to stunt-cast the guest stars on the original; the executives may change and 10 years may pass, but the attitudes are the same.) And its success is going to depend almost entirely on who they get to play the Jeremy Piven part (and then whether they can find an actress who clicks with him as well as Paula Marshall clicked with Piven). I still haven't heard a Eureka-level casting suggestion, but the floor remains open.