Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Are Getting a Sweeping Multi Season Series Exploring Their Real Lives

Everybody knows the legend of I Love Lucy, but the real story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz is far bigger than the sitcom that turned them into icons.

Their daughter Lucie Arnaz has been thinking about that bigger picture for a while, and now she is teaming up with former NBC and WarnerMedia chief Bob Greenblatt to develop a dramatic multi-season series that digs into the full scope of their lives.

Rather than another reenactment of familiar moments, this project aims to explore everything from their turbulent childhoods to the rise of I Love Lucy and the painful unraveling of their marriage.

The team has brought in Oscar nominated and Emmy winning writer Richard LaGravenese to shape the story, using material drawn from the autobiographies of Ball and Arnaz, which recently reverted back to their estates. The series is being developed by Greenblatt’s The Green Room and Arnaz’s Desilu, with Jon Wu also producing.

As Arnaz explains, the storytelling potential is much wider than many people realize. “If you’re really willing to look at the whole thing, there’s quite a story there, and a lot to be learned. It’s very emotional, and it’s not what people think. It’s not just all about I Love Lucy.”

The pitch deck, currently titled Lucy and Desi: The Greatest Story Never Told, will soon be shopped to networks and streamers. The timing feels right as I Love Lucy hits its 75th anniversary in 2026.

Greenblatt says they see the project as a multi season epic rather than a limited series. “As we take it to buyers, there’s a version of this that could be 10 hours and done, if somebody wants to jump in with that.

“But we want to present it as a multi season show. We think it’s three seasons of eight episodes. Obviously, we have to find the right buyer and cater to what they want to do. But it needs to have time to breathe.

“It really is an extraordinary story, from when they’re each teenagers in their separate worlds one being Cuba as it’s coming apart at the seams, and one being very WASPy New York. They were both thrust out on their own, quickly at a young age, to try to figure out who they were and find their way in the business.

“Then they converge in 1940 on a soundstage at RKO, doing a movie together. ‘I Love Lucy’ is 11 years later, but that’s 11 years when they’re together in a marriage that’s up and down and complex.”

Inspired by the structure of The Crown, Arnaz and Greenblatt envision each season covering a different era. Season 1, From Cuba and Jamestown to New York and Hollywood, travels from 1930 to 1940. Season 2, Family Life, B Movies and Radio, spans 1940 to 1951. Season 3, The Ricardos Catch Fire, and Beyond, dives into the I Love Lucy years and the fallout that followed.

Arnaz wanted a writer for the project who could balance the comedy the world knows with the emotional weight that defined so much of her parents’ relationship. “The story is not all ha ha. There’s a lot of sadness, there’s addiction, and there’s cheating, and there’s lots of fights for no reason.

“There’s something to be learned from what they went through and how it’s not that easy to have it all… They had this wonderful legacy, which just happens to be the funniest show ever. But they’re more than that show.

“Their lives, individually and collectively, were very exciting and amazing and deep. Finding the right writer was hard because most people might think that, because we’re doing the story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz that it’s going to be really funny.

“And it’s going to have great kinds of humor in it. But it’s not ‘I Love Lucy.’ It’s not a sitcom. Everybody says, ‘your father invented television,’ but in reality, that’s not at all what he was trying to do. They were just trying to stay together, and do a show.”

Arnaz and Greenblatt had collaborated before, though this project pushes much further than past celebrations of her parents’ legacy. She had also been involved with Being the Ricardos, but that film captured only a narrow slice of their marriage. This time, she wants to go deeper.

Greenblatt says Arnaz’s perspective is vital to making that happen. “Lucie has this ability to separate herself from being in the middle of it and really see it from an objective point of view. She’s the first person to say, ‘we want to do it warts and all, and we don’t want to just whitewash it and protect everybody.’

“It really is complex. Can we get underneath the causes and the reasons for the way they were. We all think they’re the Ricardos. There’s a part of them that’s who they were, but that’s so little of the full picture.”

LaGravenese responded immediately when they approached him. Greenblatt recalls, “Richard came to mind, as he’s got this great background in writing feature films prominently for most of his life and more recently television. I love his ‘Behind the Candelabra’ movie, for which he won the Emmy.

“When we presented the idea to him, he just lit up. He’s like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve loved these two people as a fan, and I’ve gone down the rabbit hole on the internet many times.’ He just knew a lot about the story already. Then we all met, and Lucie met him, and he just felt like the right guy.”

For Arnaz, the goal is not simply retelling familiar anecdotes. She wants clarity and honesty. “There’s been now two TV movies and a feature film and my documentary, but none of those other films ever looked at, ‘OK, that happened and that happened, but why? Why did he do that? Why did she respond that way?’

“I wanted to correct that. If nothing else, I wanted to be able to look at them as people and say, ‘aren’t they interesting? Imagine, even with all that sorrow and all that loss, he was able to do this. And then he had to drink. Well, why did he have hookers? Why did that happen?’

“And so if we can show the early and go all the way to the end, in some way, we might be able to help people understand them even more.”

If the series moves forward, it could become the most complete portrait ever made of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Their comedy changed television forever, but the story behind the laughter is dramatic, complicated and very human. This new series looks ready to finally tell it.

If you want a great in depth story of the lives of Ball and Arnaz, listen to Season 3 of The Plot Thickens pocast. There so much fans don’t know and it’s fascinating. Those two had a wild ride!

Source: Variety