ABC Family has decided to pull its pilot for ‘Alice in Arabia’ amid the controversy surrounding the drama.
The network announced the project on Monday and put it straight into development with a pilot order. However since Monday, there has been a massive backlash over potential stereotyping, which has resulted in the network pulling the pilot.
According to a press release, the show would centre on an American teenage girl kidnapped and forced to live with her extended family in Saudi Arabia.
After the script for the series was obtained by Buzzfeed, several Muslim organisations rallied against the pilot, which they claimed portrayed Muslim people in a bad light.
Earlier this week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations met with ABC Family execs to discuss “concerns about potential stereotyping in the pilot,” and on Friday (March 21) the network decided to axe the show.
“The current conversation surrounding our pilot was not what we had envisioned and is certainly not conducive to the creative process,” an ABC representative told The Hollywood Reporter. “So we’ve decided not to move forward with this project.”
ABC Family experienced controversy last year with its recently renewed family drama The Fosters, which focuses on a family with same-sex parents.
Agencies/Canadajournal/Press Releases
Interesting. You would think it muslims were so worried about what people might think about them; THEY WOULD STOP BLOWING PEOPLE UP FOR HAVING DIFFERENT BELIEFS THAN THEM.
Stop giving in to these people. We have become very weekend as a nation. What ever happened to freedom of speech or freedom of the press. I guess it doesn’t apply to muslim’s living in our country.
Why is that every time these donkey-riding-women abusers and murders whine they always get their way. If this was a show depicting christians ABC would keep it on the air!