NBC Orders Family Social Experiment from Ava DuVernay

NBC has ordered the unscripted family social experiment Home Sweet Home, created by Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winner Ava DuVernay.

Each episode of Home Sweet Home taps two families who lead very different lives for a life-changing experience through a full-immersion cultural experiment, as participants exchange homes for a week and experience the life of someone unlike them. Warner Horizon Unscripted Television will produce the series, which has been ordered for ten hour-long episodes, with DuVernay’s production company, ARRAY Filmworks.

“We are honored to partner with Ava for the first time to bring Home Sweet Home to life at NBC,” said Meredith Ahr, president of the alternative and reality group at NBC Entertainment. “Led by Ava’s powerful and hopeful creative vision, these stories will reveal genuine moments of change that we hope will spark thought-provoking conversations and encourage compassion, empathy and understanding.”

“Ava is an extraordinarily gifted and thoughtful storyteller,” said Mike Darnell, president of Warner Bros. Unscripted & Alternative Television. “This life-changing journey promises to be a rich experience affording families an opportunity to see life through a new lens.”

Brooke Karzen, executive VP and head of Warner Horizon Unscripted Television, added, “It’s a pure joy to be collaborating with Ava on her first prime-time unscripted project. Her voice is perfectly suited for this moment in time.”

DuVernay said, “The idea for Home Sweet Home came to me during the strange and important times we’re all experiencing. The premise is that we are farther apart than ever, yet bound by what we have in common—concerns with health, safety, justice and community. These notions manifest in each of us in different ways, but nowhere more striking than in the privacy of our own homes. I’m thrilled that NBC and Warner Horizon embraced the challenge of this moment to celebrate the specificity of our differences as we discover the many beautiful things that we have in common.”