When Cruel Intentions was released in Australia on April 1, 1999, almost all states and territories took Easter school holidays the following day.

The film had already been released for a month in the United States, but here, it had been held back.

Was this the time when teenagers would be off for two weeks and could flock to see some of their favorite stars, including Buffy’s Sarah Michelle Gellar and heartthrob Ryan Phillippe, frolicking around Manhattan, bedding virgins and making bets on sex?

Except that it was classified as MA15+, which meant that anyone under 18 had to be accompanied by someone over 18 or, if one was enterprising, buy a ticket for something else and try to squeeze into the right one. cinema at a time when ushers at each door were still common practice.

It was part of his illicit sensations. Like Lady Chatterley’s Lover secretly swapped between women, Cruel Intentions was watched in groups at the cinema or at sleepovers, teenage girls laughing at Phillippe’s bare bottom during the pool scene or gasping at Joshua Jackson’s portrayal of a lover as having “a mouth like a vacuum cleaner”.

Cruel Intentions is based on the 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, set in a pre-revolutionary French court, detailing the exploits of an idle and cruel aristocracy determined to play games with each other, and without caring about the innocent people corrupted in the process.

The story had been adapted for the screen before, most notably in Stephen Frears’ 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich, and also since, most recently in 2022, when it re-emerged with television and film versions .

But there was something very irreverent about the 1999 film. The choice to place it among high school students was bold. These characters had sex, were blackmailed about sex, groomed other teenagers for sex, and bet on the seduction of virgins.

They wore long designer coats and corset tops, hid their cocaine in hollowed-out crucifix necklaces, and seduced each other with promises that “you can put it anywhere.”

In the post-Lewinsky era, before 9/11, it was a time of youth cultural dominance mixed with next-millennium optimism, but the relaxation of sexual mores was limited by the hangover of mainstream conservatism. 1980s. In the end, the anti-heroes, Kathryn (Gellar) and Sebastian (Phillippe), were still punished.

A year later, the producers tried to continue this naughty momentum with a television show and even shot a pilot with a young Amy Adams reprising the role of Gellar. The network balked and said it was too raunchy for television and the footage was re-edited to become a direct-to-DVD prequel film.

If 24 years ago this was considered too lascivious, what would a version of Cruel Intentions look like today after Outlander, Bridgerton, Euphoria and 50 Shades of Gray?

It turns out that the moral panic has returned. The 2024 iteration of Cruel Intentions does not take place in high school. The title has been rebooted as an eight-episode streaming series (i.e. in 2024), and this time the characters have reached college age.

That version’s co-creator, Sara Goodman, told The Nightly that when it comes to high schoolers engaging in psychosexual games, “we live in a much more conservative world in that way right now, where people have often less sense of humor. about this.”

When Goodman and Phoebe Fisher adapted it for streaming, they wanted to keep it as “sexy” and “taboo” as the 1999 film, and setting it at the college level allowed them to walk that line today.

Goodman added: “We wanted to keep the irreverence and the sense of humor, and not lose any of those things that made it the favorite that you watch alone in your room. We want that and we don’t have it on television right now. That’s part of why we wanted to do the show.

Fisher said the choice to age the characters gave them a different dynamic to play with because at that age, “you’re still young enough to be forgiven for bad behavior but old enough to be bad.”

Changing the age range opened up a new story possibility, one that involves exploring the secret and exclusive world of American college sororities and fraternities, the college clubs where members enjoy enormous privileges, including lifelong networking.

They have also been heavily criticized for their elitism, exclusionary behaviors and even violent and destructive cultures, particularly around “pledges”, when aspiring members are hazed in a series of rituals. Since 2000, more than 62 deaths have been linked to hazing.

In the series Cruel Intentions, the bet made between the two main characters, renamed Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lucien (Zac Burgess), is not just for fun or for Lucien to prove his sexual powers.

The seduction of Annie (Savannah Lee Smith) is designed so that she joins the sorority and thus ensures her future because if Annie, the daughter of the American vice president is a member, then the club cannot be closed because of ‘a recent violation of the rules.

“One of the first things we decided when developing the game was to set it in this world of fraternities and sororities, because it felt like a (different and rarefied) world to peek behind the scenes. curtain,” Fisher said.

“In Dangerous Liaisons, we had the royal court and then in Cruel Intentions (the film), it was the Upper East Side. This seemed like a fun new iteration to explore that would serve as a backdrop for our own characters to do their power plays and manipulations.

Fisher argued that fraternities and sororities, with their rituals and traditions, have parallels to a royal court, like the one in Laclos’ book.

A month ago, the New York Times reported on a study conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles among 1,644 young Americans aged 10 to 24.

The survey found that 63.5 percent of them, up from 51.5 percent the previous year, wanted TV shows and movies to tell stories of platonic friendship rather than romance and sex .

Goodman saw the same study and admitted that there is “a different level of judgment and shame right now” but that the solution is to use humor.

“People always want (sexiness), I refuse to believe that (people) don’t want nostalgia, longing, teasing and taboos. It’s fun,” she said. “If you take it too seriously, you can run into (that judgment).

“But we keep it pretty irreverent and vile. It’s a question of power. It’s not just about sex, and I hope everyone likes it, and if they pretend not to like it, that’s okay.

Cruel Intentions is streaming on Prime Video from November 21