6. Mean Girls (2004)
Mean Girls is a great movie which is so much more than you average teenage romantic comedy/ high school film. Arguably, there are many TV shows on currently (and in the past) that have been set in or have featured high schools, but this just means that these shows work on TV. Like it or not, this isn't going to change. That said, most of the high school shows I can think of are generally 1 hour dramas, and I'd ideally like to see this show as a 20 minute sitcom. For those that haven't seen the movie, the film features a 15 year old named Cady Heron who moves from Africa with her zoologist mother and father to start a new life in America. Having been home-schooled all her life, Cady- a pretty down to earth kind of girl, finds the trials of High School life challenging. Making friends with two outcast kids, a gay eccentric boy and a gothy arty girl, the three of them plan devious schemes to take their revenge against the schools three popular and attractive "mean girls". However, Cady, whilst trying to infiltrate the "plastics" as the group is called, starts to not only become good friends with them, but starts to become the worst of them all. As long as this show was sharply written and observed, with great pop culture references and brilliant fish out of water style writing and humor I could really see this being a show that could appeal to both men and women, but particularly the teenage demographic television producers desperately want from their shows. Also, bringing back many of the original cast members probably wouldn't be as difficult as you might think. Lindsey Lohan's best film is Mean Girls, and see needs the work at the moment... so I could easily see her returning as a guest star or even a recurring character. She'd unlikely be the star considering Mean Girls was years ago, and the idea of Lindsey still being a high school student might be a difficult pill to swallow. The show would most likely have to cast a new fish out of water type character and a new batch of Mean Girls, but I'd like to see this remain a sequel connected to the film (though not in the terrible way that straight to DVD Mean Girls 2 "sequel" failed at). Tina Fey, the writer of Mean Girls and the creator of the hit show 30 Rock will also be out of work soon enough, however she has expressed interest in wanting to remain within the TV world. If she were to executive produce this show, write and direct the pilot and star as the lovable teacher, perhaps even taking a more central role this time, I could see this show being a big hit. If she could find a way to cast many other Saturday Night Live cast members to occupy the teachers lounge for instance (Kristen Wiig, Molly Shannon anyone?), I would certainly watch.