Fame reboot lands at Lifetime

Female-skewing US cable net Lifetime has greenlit Fame, a contemporary reworking of the popular US series set inside a New York school for performing arts.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Lifetime has landed Fame.

MGM, which owns the property, has been speaking about a new version of the series since 2012.

Former Idols judge Nigel Lythgoe has long been associated with the project and will produce the new series with MGM and A+E Studios, the drama division set up last year by Lifetime owner A+E Networks. Josh Safran (Gossip Girl) will pen the script.

It is not yet clear whether A+E Networks or MGM will handle international sales of the series. For MGM it is the latest reworking of one of its classic properties in the wake of MTV’s Teen Wolf series and FX’s Fargo. It is also working on a TV version of  In the Heat of the Night, which is set up at US cable net Showtime.

The Fame series ran for two seasons in the early 1980s on NBC in the US before going into syndication. It followed a 1980 movie of the same name.