Prolific screenwriter and producer Jenji Kohan is not on board with Paramount+ With Showtime’s long-rumored Weeds sequel, calling the idea a “money grab.”
Kohan served as the creator and showrunner of the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds, which aired from August 8, 2005, to September 16, 2012. The series centers on Mary-Louise Parker‘s Nancy Botwin, a widowed mother of two boys who begins selling marijuana to support her family.
Speaking at the Seriesly Berlin TV conference in Germany, the Emmy-winning writer questioned the relevancy of Weeds now that marijuana has been legalized in almost 40 states.
“I don’t really know if there’s more story to tell,” she said, per Deadline. “I think Weeds was done, and I think [a sequel] be a money grab.”
She continued, “They can do what they want, but this wouldn’t be associated with the team that made [the original series]. And I think there are many other stories to be told. I think Weeds was of its time and it’s not as relevant anymore.”
A Weeds sequel was first put into development at Starz in 2019, with Parker attached as star and executive producer. However, movement on the project slowed until four years later when Deadline reported that the revival was now in development at Showtime. News on the potential series has gone quiet again in recent years.
Mary-Louise Parker in Weeds; Michael Desmond / © Showtime / Courtesy Everett Collection
Kohan wrote on shows such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, and Friends and also created the hit Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black. More recently, she served as an executive producer for Netflix’s medieval black comedy The Decameron.
As for what’s next for Kohan, she told the audience at Seriesly that she hopes for fewer “dystopian” projects and more “protopia” stories, ones that share a more positive vision of the world.
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“Dystopia is bad for us, it’s sh***y, it’s lazy, and I’m on a huge kick to say: ‘Stop with the f***ing dystopia’. We’re being fed this diet of dystopia and then [over time] we remember this idea we’ve been given that the future is a dumpster fire, and then we manifest it,” Kohan stated.
She added, “I don’t think utopia is a greater story, not much happens. But there’s this new word that’s being thrown around – ‘protopia’ – where, basically, the future is flawed, but we’re on our trajectory towards something better. Life also has a lot of beautiful things in it, and it’s so easy and so destructive to say everything is s**t. I want to urge everyone to abandon that.”
Kohan later clarified her comments, noting that she isn’t saying all stories have to have happy endings. “You’ll always hate your mother-in-law, or you know, have bad sex, or argue with someone, or have a car accident, or whatever it is; the point is there’s always conflict,” she said. “But I think there has to be an acknowledgement that in the world there is also joy and there’s also hope.”
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