Renee Rapp Soars, Revenge Party

You don’t get to plan when you’ll get a life-changing email.

For “Mean Girls” directors Arturo Perez Jr. and Samantha Jayne, the missive that would ultimately lead to their feature directorial debut came at a particularly tough time for them. Following their well-received, Sundance-premiering short-form TV series “Quarter Life Poetry,” the married couple were deep into developing another TV show, this one about office culture.

“And then the pandemic happened, and offices ceased to exist,” Jayne explained to IndieWire over Zoom. “We were not doing so great. We’re like, ‘What is life right now?’ ‘What’s next?’ And then all of a sudden, this dream email came through with the words ‘Mean Girls’ on it. I got an IV infusion of vitamins and minerals and life!”

Over multiple chats, the duo came to learn Tina Fey was a fan of “Quarter Life Poetry” and wanted to hear how they would tackle and reinvent her beloved world of “Mean Girls,” the 2004 classic starring Lindsay Lohan that was now also a 2018 hit Broadway musical written by Fey and Jeff Richmond.

“We talked about the need for it to be surprising,” Jayne said. “We’re massive fans of every iteration of this. It had to be something new. We’re 20 years later, it’s a new generation of kids, they speak an entirely new language; it’s a whole new arena.”

This new version, based on the Broadway show, got upgraded from its planned streaming home to hit…