Pretty Little Liars fans know a little something about waiting, seeing as how we're on the back end of an eight-month hiatus splitting its seventh and final season in half. But something we might not be waiting for is a follow-up role for Pretty Little Liars' Lucy Hale, who has already lined up a new project that sounds pretty dark and awesome in dramedy Life Sentence, which has been picked up to pilot by The CW.
Life Sentence will be a one-hour comedic drama in which Lucy Hale will play a young woman who gets the awful diagnosis that she is going to die from cancer. Then cut to some point in the future, when said woman is then given the news that she isn't actually going to die, which should bring about happiness, right? Well, this character will have a lot of uncomfortable experiences in her future, thanks to the decisions she made when she was living each day as if it would be her last.
A solid concept for a series aimed at young people, that's for sure. Who wouldn't love to have their id be allowed to run rampant thanks to the knowledge of how temporary one's lease on life is? There's a good chance Lucy Hale's character will have spent a shit-ton of money on credit cards she can't pay back, as well as burning a lot of personal bridges with people who wronged her in the past. It'll be interesting to see how far on the comedy side this project skews.
Perhaps the creative team can answer that. According to Variety, executive producing Life Sentence will be Bill Lawrence, best known for hit comedies like Scrubs and Cougar Town, and Lawrence's frequent collaborator Jeff Ingold. It was written by Erin Cardillo and Richard Keith, who created the mostly forgettable CW comedy Significant Mother, and have most recently written and produced for Fuller House. So it would seem like there's more to laugh at here than get bummed out about. Which is good, because I'd like to see Lucy Hale get to show off more of her quirky and silly side.
With Pretty Little Liars coming to a close this year, Lucy Hale will have her entire career opened up for the first time since 2010. Her last scripted TV appearance was on Freeform's Baby Daddy in 2014, and she was the host in New Orleans for this year's New Year's Rockin' Eve. On the film side, she's got the upcoming dramatic comedy Dude from director Olivia Milch. Expect other big things to come whether this pilot gets picked up or not.
For now, of course, there's no sign of what will happen to Life Sentence in the future, but I'm sure Pretty Little Liars fans will start up a hashtag revolution to get the show on the air. The Freeform drama heads into its final ten episodes on Tuesday, April 18. While we wait, head to our midseason premiere schedule to see what is coming to your TVs in the near future.
