Mindy Kaling Talks Legally Blonde 3: "We Wrote Elle Woods at 40"

From Town & Country

It's been almost 20 years since Legally Blonde first hit theaters. In that time, Elle Woods's pink-hued tenacity has been cemented into our pop cultural canon—so much so, that at any point, someone could drop a "Whoever said orange was the new pink was seriously disturbed!" or a "Happy people just don't shoot their husbands," and everyone would be in on the joke.

There was the 2003 sequel, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde, and of course the 2007 musical, but in recent years, there hasn't been any Elle Woods content to inspire us. Until now.

Reese Witherspoon, bless her, has been keeping fans apprised of every development on Legally Blonde 3. Here's what we know about the long-awaited threequel.

Witherspoon is definitely returning as Elle Woods.

Thankfully, fans have been assured that Legally Blonde's beloved lead character will be back. This time around, Witherspoon is also producing, through her Hello Sunshine production company.

Elle Woods is "a very beloved character," Witherspoon explained to ET at the Big Little Lies premiere in summer 2019. "You just want her to go on a hero's journey like she does in the first movie, and I'm having a great time working on it."

Two acclaimed comedy writers are working on the script.

Per Deadline, Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project, The Office) and Dan Goor (Parks and Rec, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) have signed on to pen the screenplay, soothing any lingering doubts that the long-awaited movie might fall flat. (Two other writers were originally attached to the project—Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith and Karen McCullah, the pair behind the original Legally Blonde—but Kaling and Goor are reportedly taking a different direction; "their screenplay will have an entirely new fresh spin," according to Deadline.)

Kaling recently teased what's in store for everyone's favorite Harvard Law grad. "I can’t wait to see what people will think of the way we wrote Elle Woods. We wrote Elle Woods at 40, so how Elle is at 40 versus how she was at 21 has been really fun to imagine," she told Access. But don't worry, some things never change: "Bend and Snap is forever. We definitely have a lot of fan favorites from the original movie."

Witherspoon first confirmed the news in an unforgettable Instagram post.

In the summer of 2018, the actress posted a video of herself in her best sparkly pink bikini, reclining on a pool float—in short, a spot-on recreation of Woods's infamous Harvard Law application video. "It’s true... #LegallyBlonde3," she wrote.

The production timeline is still fuzzy.

At one time, MGM was planning for the film premiere on February 14, 2020, but that's since been scuttled.

There's still no clear start date for production, but Kaling hopes it's not too far off. "I don’t know when we’ll be able to shoot movies again but it would be great to, if Reese likes the script, shooting it this year would be awesome," she told Access.

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