What Is Happening With Legally Blonde 3? Latest Movie Updates

Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair’s ‘Legally Blonde’ Reunion Is Too Perfect For Words

Whoever thought Legally Blonde 3 had been canceled for good is seriously disturbed.

Indeed, eight years after the highly anticipated follow-up was first announced, Reese Witherspoon—who portrayed Elle Woods in 2001's Legally Blonde and the 2003 sequel—shared an exciting update about a potential third installment.

When asked if Legally Blonde 3 could happen one day, Witherspoon confirmed it's still on the table.

"Absolutely," she told Bustle in a March interview. "It’s a whole world that we want to build with this character."

"Not dissimilar to what happened with Barbie two summers ago, there's a feeling that women want to rally around these characters that were part of their childhood," Witherspoon continued, "and celebrate the idea that Elle Woods is more than the color pink. She's part of your identity of self-worth and accomplishment."

But don't start practicing the bend and snap just yet. Witherspoon—who is a producer on the new Legally Blonde prequel series Elle—did not share whether or not Legally Blonde 3 is still in active development.

In the years since the actress announced in June 2018 that she’d inhabit Elle Woods once more, the project has experienced multiple delays.

In May 2020, MGM Studios (now Amazon MGM Studios) shared that Mindy Kaling and Dan Goor had been recruited to write the screenplay, with Kaling expressing her excitement over the news at the time.

"Elle Woods is so iconic, proving you can be girly and smart at the same time," she wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post. "Bend and snap people!"

And the following October, Legally Blonde 3 received an official release date of May 2022.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Yet, that was the studio's last official update, with the film becoming indefinitely delayed.

Among the issues, Kaling revealed, was that writing the script was, in fact, hard.

"We don’t want to be responsible for ruining what’s basically Reese’s Avengers franchise,” Kaling told TIME in March 2022, revealing the screenplay was not yet finished, but teased some themes of the story. "What is Elle Woods like at 42? Does she end up becoming all the things she wanted? How does that personality manifest in a grown woman? Has she become more cynical? Her brightness and her cheerfulness really worked when she was 22, but how has life changed her perspective on things?”

Moviestore/Shutterstock

But like the rest of us Witherspoon wants a third film real bad.

"I'm still hoping that Legally Blonde 3 is gonna come together in the right way," she told USA Today in July 2022. "It's just like Top Gun. They waited a long time to make another version of that movie, and I loved the nostalgia piece they incorporated in it. So definitely that gave us a lot of inspiration about what we would want to do with Elle Woods and make sure that we had all those same touchstones that mattered to people [back] then."

And the Hello Sunshine founder wasn't the only star who shared a desire to reprise their roles once again.

Luke Wilson—who played Witherspoon's on-screen love interest Emmett Richmond in the films—noted that it would be "really fun to make another movie."

"Reese is such a sharp individual," he explained on Good Morning America in August 2022. "I think she's probably just waiting for the script to be right and the time to be right."

Similarly, that same month, Jennifer Coolidge expressed that she would be "excited" by the idea of returning to the iconic role of Paulette Bonafonté, particularly so fans could move from her character's oft-repeated line from Legally Blonde 2 about the 4th of July.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Prime Video

And while Wilson admitted in June 2024 that he still hadn't "heard anything" about Legally Blonde 3, that doesn't mean Elle's story isn't being told in another way.

Prime Video's Legally Blonde prequel Elle, starring Lexi Minetree as a young Elle Woods, takes viewers back in time to 1995, sharing a look at the eponymous main character's high school days. (Learn about all of the Easter eggs in the show here.)

Yet, even the producers behind Elle are looking toward the future.

When asked what she believes Elle is up to today, the show's executive producer and Hello Sunshine President of Film and TV Lauren Neustadter told E! News, "We're gonna have to make another movie at some point to answer that question, but I cannot answer it yet! Something to look forward to."

In the meantime, study up on these secrets from the OG film.

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