Roots Remake, War & Peace Event Series Part of A+E Networks’ Upfront

NEW YORK: A+E Networks has presented upcoming programming highlights across its channel bouquet, including a cross-network event series based on the TV classic Roots.

HISTORY, A&E and Lifetime have greenlit the Roots scripted event series. Will Packer (Ride Along, Think Like a Man) joins as executive producer, and original Roots cast member and Emmy Award winner LeVar Burton boards as co-executive producer. Mark Wolper is also executive producer. The event is slated to air in 2016. Lifetime, A&E and HISTORY have teamed up with The Weinstein Company, BBC Cymru Wales and BBC Worldwide/Lookout Point on a major limited series event based on Leo Tolstoy’s enduring novel War and Peace. The program will be simulcast in the U.S. on all three networks in 2016.

For HISTORY, the new series Alone will follow a bold survival experiment, billed as the longest ever captured for television. The ten-episode series sees ten survivalists left alone in the Vancouver Island wilderness; whoever can survive the longest will receive $500,000. The scripted series Boys of '67 is in development for HISTORY. Produced by A+E Studios in association with Head First Productions and Muse Entertainment, the series is about a division deployed in Vietnam. HISTORY also has a new digital series in the works, Shotgun. The game show sees contestants trying to answer questions while riding "shotgun" in a high-performance race car.

The slate at A&E includes Damian, a drama series inspired by the horror classic The Omen. The network has also lined up Fit 2 Fat 2 Fit, which sees ten trainers eat what the average overweight American eats and stop working out, before they team with an obese person and go on a weight-loss journey. A&E will also serve as the exclusive home for the 2015 and 2016 Critics Choice Movie Awards and Critics Choice Television Awards.

Lifetime this summer will debut UnREAL, a scripted drama set behind-the-scenes of a fictitious dating reality show. Sing It! (working title) follows two cross-town rival a cappella groups from New Jersey who battle it out. Lifetime is also launching a brand-new digital platform, tentatively called Fall Into Me. This marks the network's first original scripted content for nonlinear distribution. The short-form digital platform will feature romantic drama stories, targeted at modern, tech-savvy women.

Over at the FYI network, programming highlights include What the Fung?!, following foodie comedians and brothers Andrew and David Fung as they travel across the U.S. eating at local spots; Married at First Sight: The First Year, a spin-off docuseries that features two couples who have remained married from season one of Married at First Sight; and Tiny House: The First 24, which is a digital companion series that features the funniest moments of families' first 24 hours in their new tiny home. Also announced for FYI is Food Porn, in which Michael Chernow goes on a nationwide hunt for the most popular #foodporn dishes.