Premiering in July on Prime Video, Elle told the story of the iconic Elle Woods once again, only this time starting when she was 16 years old. Lexi Minetree was picked to take over Reese Witherspoon's beloved, career-defining performance, alongside the likes of June Diane Raphael, Tom Everett Scott, and more. Becoming the most-viewed show on Prime Video during its first week of release, there's no doubt that Elle proved popular on Prime Video, with the 2001 original now also a streaming favorite.
Robert Luketic's classic based on Amanda Brown's novel was a big hit in theaters upon release, turning an $18 million production budget into more than $140 million worldwide to date. 25 years later, it is still a favorite of many, illustrated by the success of the prequel series. At the time of writing, Legally Blonde is one of the ten most-streamed titles on MGM+ in the U.S., a list topped by Jon Hamm's American Hostage.
Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to be somebody's person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of you.
You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most durable way anybody has found to do this.
You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the relationship easier.
The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting somebody you are not supposed to want.
You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version of it.
The Legally Blonde prequel might not have lived up to the 2001 original, but it was still enjoyed by the franchise's legions of fans. But what many of those fans didn't know was that Elle was inspired by another modern streaming adaptation, one that stars Jenna Ortega as a nihilistic teen psychic. "I saw that Wednesday Addams show and I was like, 'Oh, she was in high school.' I loved it. I watched every episode. I thought it was amazing," Witherspoon said in an interview ahead of Elle. "And I was like, 'We should do Elle Woods in high school because I wanted to see who she was before college, before law school."
Legally Blonde is one of the ten most-streamed titles on MGM+ in the U.S. Stay tuned to Collider for more.
