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Like the end of a slow-motion musical montage on the beach, the “Baywatch” reboot has found a home: Fox has closed a script + penalty deal for a reboot of the long-running surf, sand and saviors series. Fremantle.
Fox and Fremantle have tapped Lara Olsen (“Spinning Out”) to serve as showrunner of the new “Baywatch,” which was originally created by Michael Berk, Douglas Schwartz and Gregory J. Bonann. Starring David Hasselhoff, “Baywatch” originally aired from 1989 to 1999 and was later recast as “Baywatch Hawaii” from 1999 to 2001.
Olsen, Berk, Bonann and Schwartz will executive produce the hour-long drama, which hails from both Fremantle and Fox Entertainment. Here’s the new tagline: “Daring ocean rescues, pristine beaches, and iconic red swimsuits are back, along with a whole new generation of Baywatch lifeguards, navigating complicated and messy personal lives in this reboot. full of action that shows that there is the family you are born into and the family you find.”
This isn’t Fox’s first visit to the lifeguard cabin: the network also aired the TV movie “Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding” in 2003.
In addition to Hasselhoff, the show’s cast over the years included Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth, Alexandra Paul, Erika Eleniak, Nicole Eggert, Parker Stevenson and many others. Hasselhoff also starred in a spin-off series, the private drama “Baywatch Nights,” which aired from 1995 to 1997. “Baywatch” was a syndication sensation, airing in more than 145 countries at one point, more than any other television show. . The show’s PR company even made up a statistic, calling it the “No. 1 series in the world”, which was later reprinted as a fact in publications.
The show was originally inspired by Bonann’s time as a Los Angeles County lifeguard. Bonann later became an Olympics filmmaker and, after years of hosting a show about lifeguards, he finally met Berk and Schwartz. They originally developed “Baywatch” for Grant Tinker’s GTG series, which had a series commitment at CBS. When the Eye network disappeared, the pilot “Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier” was sold to NBC, which aired it as a movie and successfully picked up a 12-episode season.
“Baywatch” was a flop on NBC and the producers managed to buy back the rights to the show from GTG to produce new premiere episodes in syndication. The producers recruited a variety of investors, including a small distributor, LBS, as well as an earlier version of Fremantle (which had distributed the show internationally and seen Hasselhoff’s popularity in Germany), British outlet ITV, and television station Chris- Craft. cluster. All-American TV, run by Scotti Bros. Records, agreed to invest as guarantor for the show and then took over as distributor when LBS went bankrupt. Pearson TV later purchased All-American; Pearson eventually became part of FremantleMedia, which was created through a series of mergers by Germany’s Bertelsmann in 2001 (FremantleMedia became Fremantle in 2018).
And that’s the long road until “Baywatch” ended up being a featured title in the Fremantle library. A “Baywatch” reboot has been discussed in the past; More recently, a “Baywatch” movie starring Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron was released in 2017. That film grossed $178 million worldwide.
As for Olsen, she’s very familiar with rebooting classic TV franchises, having worked on revivals of “90210” and “Beauty and the Beast,” both on The CW. Her other credits include “Blood and Treasure,” “Reign,” “Life Unexpected,” and “Private Practice.” Olsen is represented by Independent Artist Group and attorney Melissa Rogal.