‘Pretty Little Liars’ Marlene King To Bring Sara Shepard’s ‘The Perfectionists’ Books To ABC Family As Potential Series

From the team behind ABC Family’s flagship drama series Pretty Little Liars comes The Perfectionists, a new drama project for the network that’s destined to become an instant hot commodity. Based on the latest young-adult book series by Sara Shepard, the best-selling author of Pretty Little Liars, The Perfectionists is being executive produced by Marlene King, who developed PLL for television and serves as executive producer/co-showrunner on the series. She also will supervise the script. Like PLL, The Perfectionists, now in development, hails from Alloy Entertainment and Warner Horizon TV. Search is under way for a writer.

The Perfectionists is a murder mystery. After their lives are ruined by a handsome womanizer, five girls plot the perfect revenge. Then he dies, exactly how they planned — but they didn’t do it. So who did? King executive produces with Alloy’s Les Morgenstein and Cheryl Dolins.

Although the first book in the series was not published until this month, The Perfectionists first was developed as a TV series by Alloy and Warner Bros last season when it was set up at the CW with Arika Lisanne Mittman as writer-executive producer.

Pretty Little Liars is the No. 1 series in ABC Family’s history in total viewers (3.7 million in Live+7) and across all key demo,s including adults 18-34 (1.5 million/2.2 rating), adults 18-49 (2.0 million/1.6 rating) and persons 12-34 (2.4 million/2.6 rating). PLL also dominates on Twitter. It holds the record for the most tweeted episode of a scripted series and has the top six most-tweeted episodes of a scripted series.

Pretty Little Liars was Shepard’s first YA book series. The second, The Lying Game, also became an ABC Family drama series, which ran for two seasons. The author launched two new book franchises in 2014: The Heiresses, which has been in development as a TV series at Bravo, and The Perfectionists.