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Shoulder Pad Alert! Another Classic Prime-Time Soap Is Headed for the Big Screen

OMG! The Carringtons are coming back in a prequel movie about the '80s fave megarich oil family

By Marc Malkin Jan 12, 2011 6:20 PMTags
Dynasty CastABC

Move over, Dallas!

There's another classic prime-time soap from the '80s headed for a big-screen reboot…

I just got word that a Dynasty movie is in the works.

Words cannot express how much I am dying over this news. It...is...beyond!

Dynasty creator Richard Shapiro tells me the movie, a prequel to the hit '80s soap, will be set in the 1960s. "It's not the wild and crazy 1960s, but the early Kennedy years," he said. The story will focus on Blake's discovery that he's heir to the Carrington empire and his love affair with Alexis.

The original Aaron Spelling-produced Dynasty series centered on Denver's oil-rich Carrington family, headed by patriarch Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) and his secretary turned second wife Krystle (Linda Evans). The star-studded cast included Joan Collins (as Blake's first wife and catfight queen Alexis), Heather Locklear, Diahann Carroll, Pamela Sue Martin, Jack Coleman, George Hamilton and the late Rock Hudson.

Shapiro said the script will soon be shopped around to studios. Casting hasn't begun, but Shapiro said their hope is the film will be the first in a Dynasty franchise.

"We've given thought to the movie before and we've been approached by a lot of companies, but no one seemed to have a proper fix on it. Then suddenly we said, 'Let's do it [ourselves]!'—and we're the ones to do it," Shapiro said.

"It was my daughter Florie's notion to do a prequel, and that sounded very very good to us. It's how young Blake doesn't realize he's the son of Tom Carrington, but then he finds himself at the head of this company and surrounded by assassins and people who want to do him in."

Dynasty premiered exactly 30 years ago—Jan. 12, 1981—and ran until May 1989. It even spawned a short-lived spinoff, The Colbys, starring Charlton Heston.

A Dynasty reunion miniseries aired in 1991.