Heathers Will Air on U.S. TV in 'Five-Night Binge Event'

Heathers will be airing on television in the United States.

In June, the show -- inspired by the 1989 cult film of the same name starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater about suicide and violence in high school -- was canceled in the wake of school shootings in multiple locations, including Parkland, Fla.

Heathers was originally scheduled to air on the Paramount Network March 3, but the shootings spurred a delay and its eventual cancellation. The series aired overseas in select countries via HBO Go, but its future stateside seemed shaky.

"The combination of a high school show with these very dark moments didn't feel right," Keith Cox, Paramount Network president of development and production, told The Hollywood Reporter at the time.

Now Heathers is again set to premiere on the Paramount Network, albeit in an edited format.

The Hollywood Reporter says Heathers will air every night in two-hour slots from October 25 to 29, in what its network billed it as a "five-night binge event." The episodes can also be streamed beginning October 22 on Paramount Network's apps and website.

"Critical" scenes have been removed from this version, the entertainment magazine notes, and the number of episodes has been condensed from 10 to nine. Deleted scenes include a cliffhanger after an explosion at a high school as well as a character going on a school shooting spree in a video game.

It was not the original intention to edit Heathers, but Paramount executives could not find a home for the intact series on other U.S. platforms, including Netflix and Freeform, which passed on the opportunity.

There were other controversies tied to Heathers before its initial planned release. The Daily Beast panned the series in its review, titled "The New Heathers Is a Trumpian, LGBT-Bashing Nightmare."

This article took issue with the show's vision of the popular clique of Heathers in 2018: queer young people and members of the P.C. police who use their social media followings to shame their heteronormative peers. The show, which had released its pilot online before its premiere date changed, even gained a fan base among some members of the alt-right.

The Heathers TV show depicts Heather Chandler (Melanie Field) as a heavyset queen bee, Heather Duke (Brendan Scannell) as a genderqueer subordinate, and Heather McNamara (Jasmine Mathews) as a biracial girl posing as a lesbian in order to gain admittance into this popular clique.

Shannen Doherty, who starred in the Heathers film, guest-starred in the pilot and appeared in a trailer advertising the television show's new premiere date. Watch it below.