Attention surf babes: Blue Crush is about to make a comeback. News broke last night that the iconic 2002 film is getting a TV series reboot on NBC, sending a generation of millennials into fits of throwback nostalgia. It was nearly fifteen years ago, after all, that a young Kate Bosworth burst onto the big screen with a piercing blue gaze, sun-bleached blonde hair, and the kind of six-pack abs that set hearts aflutter. As she and her gang of on-screen surfer babe friends—which included an equally ripped Michelle Rodriguez and authentically toned amateur surfer Sanoe Lake—ripped, curled, and paddled their way to the plot line's finale surf competition, they set a new bar for girl power.
"That was the most intense physical experience I have ever gone through," Bosworth has said during interviews, citing seven hour days of high intensity cross training to prepare for the role. "[It] took four hours of surfing and an hour of weight training and an hour of either running the beach or running under the water with a rock" to transform her body into the authentic wave-catching force of nature that dominated nearly all 104 minutes of the film.
If Blue Crush sparked an appreciation of the sport's full body-toning powers—see Bosworth's sculpted shoulders, back, stomach, arms, and legs for proof—it also inspired a new wave of twenty-something women to shake off the idea that surfing was a boys club, grabbing a board and hitting the water together. These days, a bevy of international cool girls, from Dree Hemingway to Andreea Diaconu have taken up the sandy, body transformative pasttime and count surf camp vacations from Costa Rica to Indonesia as amongst their favorite excursions.
For those who don't live by the water (or simply don't like getting wet), there's even SurfSet, the challenging indoor surfing workout at gyms like New York's Chelsea Piers that uses a custom-built balance board to mimic the ocean's waves. It’s safe to say that with a Blue Crush reboot in the works—and the original film about to go into heavy rotation on Netflix—they'd best gear up the waitlist.