First Plot Details on ‘Dallas’ Remake Emerge

TNT remains committed to bringing back the biggest soap opera ever to grace our television screens, “Dallas.” Not only that, but the script for the remake (or continuation, more like it) is already being passed around to the show’s “veterans” – and the first details have leaked.

As we also informed you a while back, the network is looking into getting back some of the original cast members to reprise their respective parts, while also casting younger actors for the new generation of residents at the ranch.

Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy are just two of the stars whose roles are included in the new script. But there are also some that won’t be returning, Yahoo! reports.

“A lot has changed since we last visited with the Ewings in CBS’s 1996 and 1998 reunion movies,” Yahoo! writes, based on details made available from the script.

“For starters, Miss Ellie and Clayton are dead and buried on the ranch, reflecting the real-life losses of Howard Keel and Barbara Bel Geddes, and Bobby Ewing (Duffy) is remarried,” the e-zine further ntoes.

“But J.R. is still scheming and Sue Ellen has remained a powerful confidant and sober mother to all grown-up John Ross,” Yahoo! also says.

While TNT boss Michael Wright was confident in an October statement that the “continuation” (which is just fancy-speak for the television correspondent of “sequel”) that the project would pick up speed very soon, some of the actors supposedly involved in it are not that quick to agree.

Take Larry Hagman, for instance. He’s already seen the script and he declares himself quite happy about it. However, he’s yet to sign on the dotted line because TNT hasn’t yet made him a good offer for it.

“I read the script and liked it. A lot of it is exposition to explain what’s happened since we went off in the ‘90s. Miss Ellie’s passed on and such. But they haven’t made a firm offer yet,” the actor reveals.

“We’re kicking ideas around, but nothing’s been struck in gold. We’ll see how it goes; I’m still ambivalent about it,” Hagman adds.

Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray are a bit more optimistic: though not saying out loud they’re locked in their contracts and coming back to “Dallas” when production starts, they promise this TNT production will be precisely what “Dallas” fans have been asking and waiting for for the past 2 decades.