In an era of rampant reboots, its been awfully quiet at the Ingalls house.
EW investigates why its taken so long for Hollywood to return to Walnut Grove.
“We’ve all said it would be great to see it in the Smithsonian.”
Everett Collection
More than 35 years later, it’s still in Ivar’s backyard.
(More on that later.)
But interest in the franchise has never diminished.
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“It seems like a very simple story.
Landon agreed, but only if he could star and exec-produce as well.
(Landon died in 1991, followed by MacBride in 1995 and Friendly in 2007.)
“My mother read the books to us when we were children,” recalls the former Ticketmaster exec.
He borrowed one and went on a business trip.
By the time he landed, he immediately called his lawyer.”
“They were dealing with issues, but they were fundamentally happy.”
After theLittle Housestage musical, Trip Friendly tried to get another project off the ground.
(Paramount considered picking up the script, but the deal never came to pass.)
“We came close but not close enough,” Friendly recalls with disappointment.
But he hasn’t given up.
He says he is currently developing another reboot, but is not ready to go into details.
“It was something that I talked with my father about before he passed in 2007.
I really felt it would be exciting to reboot the material,” he says.
We feel optimistic that this will happen."
When it does, there’s at least one actor ready to make a cameo.
“I’m totally there.
I have no shame.”
The actual little house, meanwhile, continues to lie dormant in California, awaiting its next close-up.
But I think it’s a wonderful thing if it can be done.
There has always been a great deal of interest inLittle Houseand in a reboot, particularly this year."
Butler agrees: “We are facing challenges that nobody has ever seen.
It’s a wonderful time to inspire people with stories about a time when life was simpler.”
A version of this story appears in the December issue ofEntertainment Weekly, on stands now oravailable here.
