‘Women in Chains!’ to Fill Networks’ Long-Standing Rose McGowan/Mud Wrestling Vacuum

Even though Rose McGowan and Robert Rodriguez have yet to shoot their planned Barbarella remake — which is going to start any day now if McGowan’s recent fantasy promise holds — they’re wasting little time moving forward with their next classy genre collaboration: Women in Chains! No, seriously, that’s what they’re actually calling it:

Director Robert Rodriguez is shopping around Women in Chains! a violent drama set at a woman’s prison starring his fiancee, Rose McGowan. …

McGowan is set to play one of five chained women at the centre of the show, which Rodriguez is expected to direct. The two first worked together on last year’s Planet Terror, Rodriguez’s homage to 1970s exploitation flicks.

The new show also is rumoured to be fashioned with a 1970s exploitation sensibility, with such staples like mud wrestling.

We’re told there are scripts circulating — with dialogue and exposition in actual English — at networks including NBC and FX, where the market for prime-time exploitation dramas apparently surged when we weren’t looking. We didn’t think anything could shake McGowan from her single-minded alien ambitions from a month ago, but! Seeing as those Barbarella spaceships are only half-built and she can make a mud pit in about 15 minutes flat, we can’t really blame her for compromising. A woman — even one in chains — has gotta eat, right?

• Robert Rodriguez shops prison series [THR]