Angela Lansbury says she is “relieved” the planned remake of her detective show Murder, She Wrote has been scrapped.
Due to star Octavia Spencer, who won an Oscar for The Help, a pilot episode was ordered last October.
According to Deadline, NBC had now pulled the plug on the show.
Angela Lansbury, who played amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the original series, told the BBC she was “terribly pleased and relieved” by the news.
“I knew it was a terrible mistake,” she said.
“I didn’t want to sully the memory.”
Angela Lansbury added: “Octavia Spencer is a superb actress. She had no business being put into a situation that she couldn’t win.”
Angela Lansbury says she is “relieved” the planned remake of her detective show Murder, She Wrote has been scrapped
The original was one of the most successful series in TV history with Angela Lansbury playing mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher in 264 episodes from 1984-1996.
At the height of its popularity, Murder, She Wrote attracted 23 million viewers in the US.
Angela Lansbury won four Golden Globes and 12 consecutive Emmy nominations for her performance.
In the remake, Octavia Spencer was to be a hospital administrator who dabbled in detective work.
When the plans were announced, Angela Lansbury said she was not happy they were using the same title.
She told the AP: “I think it’s a mistake to call it Murder, She Wrote because Murder, She Wrote will always be about Cabot Cove and this wonderful little group of people who told those lovely stories and enjoyed a piece of that place, and also enjoyed Jessica Fletcher, who is a rare and very individual kind of person.
“So I’m sorry that they have to use the title Murder, She Wrote, even though they have access to it and it’s their right.”
However, Deadline suggested NBC may revisit a Murder, She Wrote revival in the future, with a different concept.
A reboot of Murder, She Wrote series is in the works, starring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer.
Octavia Spencer has signed on to appear in the pilot ordered by NBC, reports Deadline.
The new take will feature Octavia Spencer as a hospital administrator who is also an amateur detective.
The original series, which starred Angela Lansbury, ran for 12 seasons on rival network CBS from 1984 to 1996.
At the height of its popularity, it attracted some 23 million viewers in the US and earned Angela Lansbury four Golden Globes for the role, as well as 12 consecutive Emmy nominations.
NBC has ordered a “put pilot”, which guarantees the episode will air, but does not guarantee it will be commissioned for a full series.
NBC is bringing back Murder, She Wrote, with Octavia Spencer playing Angela Lansbury role
It has been described as a “light, contemporary procedural in the vein of Bones or Fargo”.
“I’ve always considered myself an armchair detective and in a recent meeting with [NBC chairman] Bob Greenblatt, he asked me what type of character would be able to lure me to TV,” Octavia Spencer said.
“Naturally, I said JB Fletcher meets Colombo… and here we are.”
The pilot will be produced by David Janollari, who worked on Six Feet Under, and will be written by former Desperate Housewives executive producer Alexandra Cunningham.
If the show gets picked up, it will be the first regular series for Octavia Spencer, who has previously guest-starred on numerous shows including Ugly Betty, The Big Bang Theory and Chuck Lorre’s latest comedy Mom, starring Anna Faris and Allison Janney.
Murder, She Wrote is NBC’s latest “re-imagining” – it is also re-working 1980s crime series Remington Steele and 1994 film Reality Bites.
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Joanna Findlay, a Scottish university lecturer from Hollywood, US, faces 50 years in jail for trying to murder her husband Gary Trogdon after finding his child porn.
Joanna Findlay, 41, blasted her husband in the chest at their home in Hollywood, Maryland, but failed to kill him.
Gary Trogdon, 55, a former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, then took the gun and killed himself.
Jurors at St Mary’s County Circuit Court found Joanna Findlay, originally from Blairgowrie, Perthshire, guilty of attempted second degree murder following a two-and-a-half-day trial.
Joanna Findlay was also found guilty of the statutory firearms offence of using a handgun in the commission of a felony.
Joanna Findlay, a Scottish university lecturer from Hollywood, US, faces 50 years in jail for trying to murder her husband Gary Trogdon after finding his child porn
State attorney Richard Fritz said Joanna Findlay now faces a potential 30 years in jail for attempted second degree murder, and potentially another 20 years on top for the firearms offence.
Richard Fritz said: “The jury found that she tried to murder him before he shot himself. They decided there was not enough evidence as to whether he committed suicide or she murdered him.
“The jury maybe thought that he committed suicide, but found that she had tried to murder him as well.”
Joanna Findlay, who was an English lecturer at Maryland University, insisted throughout that Gary Trogdon had in fact shot himself over the embarrassment at his child porn cache.
The trial heard that Gary Trogdon had gone to a local support group the morning before he died, after his wife insisted he seek help for his obsession with child pornography.
Later that day, on October 30, 2010, they were seen in good spirits and had gone to a Mexican restaurant in California, Maryland, for dinner with a neighbour after helping work on their chicken coop.
However, the court heard there was a rapid deterioration in their behaviour and later that night Joanna Findlay tried to overdose on drugs but her husband took them off her.
Joanna Findlay claimed in court that he later assaulted her after she again brought up the child pornography.
The woman said: “He pushed me down on the bed and he laid on top of me… He wouldn’t let me up.”
After more struggling, Joanna Findlay said she eventually freed herself and took a .22-calibre pistol from a coffee table drawer in the living room.
Joanna Findlay said she shot the gun into the floor to scare him away and then called police.
Richard Fritz, prosecuting, said her husband took the gun off her but she then got hold of another pistol, this time a .38 calibre weapon, and then shot her husband at close range.
Joanna Findlay’s lawyer, John Ray, said that police seized several computers that have thousands of images of child porn from a computer owned by GaryTrogdon, who lectured in military history.
Gary Trogdon, a former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, killed himself after his wife Joanna Findlay attempted to murder him
Officers found 10 guns in total in their home, but local medical examiner Dr Ana Rubio said it was difficult to say how Gary Trogdon had died.
Dr. Ana Rubio said: “The wound itself allows to be any of those three possibilities – homicide, suicide or accidental.”
Another medical expert, physician Dr. Jonathan Arden, concluded that the death was a suicide.
“You could put it in a textbook as an example of a suicidal gunshot wound,” Dr. Jonathan Arden said.
Joanna Findlay had originally faced a charge of murder in the first degree. If she been found guilty of that, she could have become the sixth person to have been executed in Maryland since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976.
