Dolly Parton Movie ‘9 to 5’ to Be Remade for #MeToo Era
The 1980 film that arguably did as much for women in the workplace as it did for Dolly Parton‘s crossover move from country to pop is getting a timely reboot. Deadline reports that , which starred Parton in her breakout role alongside film veterans Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, looks poised to return to the big screen with a modern take to make the concept – sexual harassment in an office environment and a post- #MeToo world – relevant to a younger audience of filmgoers.
According to Deadline, film studio 20th Century Fox is in the early stages of a new version and actress-writer Rashida Jones (Parks & Recreation) is being sought to team with the original film’s writer, Pat Resnick, to pen the script that finds the original stars joining a trio of young women dealing with sexism and chauvinism in the workplace. Parton, Tomlin and Fonda have frequently expressed interest in working together and updating the film, which saw them uniting to take down their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss, played by Dabney Coleman.
Written by Parton between takes on the set of the film, the film’s title song won the singer-songwriter two Grammys and scored her an Academy Award nomination. It also topped the pop and country charts, the first song by a Nashville-based female artist to do so since Jeannie C. Riley in 1968 with “Harper Valley P.T.A.” A Number One hit on the adult contemporary chart as well, “9 to 5” and the film became the basis for a short-lived TV series starring Parton’s sister, Rachel Dennison, and was turned into a Broadway musical in 2009.
“We’ve been waitin’ for a 9 to 5 reunion ever since we did the first one,” Parton said, flanked by her co-stars onstage at the 2017 Emmys. “And in 2017, we still refuse to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot,” Tomlin added after Fonda made a not-too-thinly-veiled reference to President Trump. Parton, who remained silent from that point on, nevertheless faced backlash from Trump’s supporters.
“I didn’t know for several days that there had been that much of a … where I was being crucified, so to speak,” she told Rolling Stone Country after the incident. “I was shocked and surprised that I was being bashed on. I thought, ‘Well, I didn’t do anything.’ I can’t answer for Lily and Jane! I don’t do politics. I’m an entertainer. I don’t ever voice my personal opinions about stuff like that. I don’t know what it is that everybody thought I should or shouldn’t have done. I couldn’t tell them what to do. I mean, everybody knows that about them. But I was just happy to be back out there with the two of them, the three of us. We got a standing ovation, the first time since 9 to 5, which was such a powerhouse of a movie.”
Elsewhere, Fonda and Tomlin are set to return for a fifth season of their Netflix comedy series Grace & Frankie.