Lifetime Flips the Script, Starts Making Shows With Ronda Rousey and Serena Williams

Lifetime is undergoing a major rebranding with more empowering shows made with younger stars like Selena Gomez.

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Complex Original

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The women-focused cable network Lifetime has been kind of a joke for years. For better or worse, the network was known more for ridiculous made-for-TV movies about women getting kidnapped or turned out or marrying themselves than for anything that actually empowered women. They've been more self aware lately, though. They even let Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig make a Lifetime movie parodying the network's whole deal last year.

And now, The Hollywood Reporter writes, the decades-old network is ready to shed its TV-for-moms image and get younger, edgier and more relevant with a major rebranding into something called a "fempire." To do that, the network announced it's enlisting the help of Selena Gomez, Ronda Rousey, Serena Williams, Janet Jackson and others. 

A few of the things they reportedly have planned: 

  • A scripted series inspired by the life of Selena Gomez that Gomez will executive produce. 
  • Three movies starring Ronda Rousey that will "bring stories that reflect her passions about empowerment to the screen," according to Deadline.
  • A movie produced by Serena Williams "inspired by the annual dance-off she hosts with sister Venus."
  • A project produced by Janet Jackson that will be about "the only female gangster during Prohibition."
  • "A film in which R&B singer Michel'le, who dated Dr. Dre and marriedSuge Knight, will share her side of the story."
  • An American Horror Story-style anthology series titled A Midsummer's Nightmare, "wherein each season takes a classic Shakespearean tale and twists it into modern-day horror mystery."

Well, at least none of that could possibly be worse than a movie titled She Woke Up Pregnant.

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