The Charmed reboot has taken another hit after original star Alyssa Milano revealed that progress is still going seriously slow. The CW confirmed in January that they would be bringing the show back as a prequel series, set in 1976, but it doesn't sound like the actress and her former onscreen sisters - Shannen Doherty, Holly Marie Combs and Rose McGowan - will be apart of it.
Alyssa played Phoebe Halliwell for eight seasons of the show, from 1998 to 2006, and recently told the Daily Beast everything she knew about the new series:
“I’ll tell you everything I know: the last few years, CBS Studios—not the network, the studio—has been trying to reboot Charmed without any of the old cast members. They just want to use the franchise because we have the best fans ever, they were up in arms over this and said you can’t do Charmed without the original cast members. I think CBS Studios understands the importance of getting it right, so they came up with the idea last year that they were going to do a prequel to our story but the script didn’t come in the way they wanted, and so it went back into redevelopment.”
The actress explained that she, Holly, Shannen and Rose have all publicly expressed their interest in returning in some reunion form or another in the new series but have yet to be offered anything by The CW or Netflix, where it has also been reported that the show might air. The reboot is being written by Jessica O’Toole, Amy Rardin and Jennie Snyder - following their work on The CW show Jane the Virgin - and Entertainment Weekly suggested that if the Halliwell sisters returned it would only be in a guest star capacity.\
Related: Charmed Reboot Will Not Connect to Original Series
However, with the new show going back into redevelopment it could mean that Alyssa and the gang may end up being a bigger part of it. It would certainly appease original fans who are skeptical of a Charmed series without the original witches in it and given that it's supernatural in nature it wouldn't be too hard to bring them back.
Fan expectation will certainly create some high-pressure in the writers' room as a lot of the show's original audience will be tuning in when it airs, however, that doesn't mean that a series without the Halliwell sisters is set to be a certain fail. It's been over ten years since Charmed ended and even towards its last seasons the storylines weren't as magic as the earlier ones. Breathing fresh life into the series, with new stars to fall in love with and plots to keep viewers grips could well be a better tribute to the original series than actually having the original characters in it.