Netflix Reboots True Crime & Paranormal Series ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ With ‘Stranger Things’ EP Shawn Levy
EXCLUSIVE: Unsolved Mysteries is back after Netflix revived the long-running true crime and paranormal franchise.
The series, which was hosted by Robert Stack and ran for over 500 episodes between 1987 and 2010, is being refreshed by Stranger Things EP Shawn Levy and his company 21 Laps Entertainment and Netflix.
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I hear that Levy is overseeing the revamp in association with Cosgrove-Meurer Productions, the original production company run by the show’s creators John Cosgrove and Terry Dunn Meurer. The latter will show run the series with Cosgrove, Levy and Josh Barry as exec producers. Robert Wise is co-exec producer and showrunner with Dunn Meurer.
The 12-part show will use re-enactments in a documentary format to profile real-life mysteries and unsolved crimes, lost love, cases involving missing persons and unexplained paranormal events. Each episode will focus on one mystery. In the original series, actors played the victims, criminals and witnesses but family members and police were regularly interviewed.
Unsolved Mysteries ran on NBC between 1987 and 1997 and CBS picked it up for two years after it was cancelled. Lifetime aired a number of new episodes in 2001/2002 and Spike also picked it up between 2008 and 2010 with Dennis Farina replacing Stack following The Untouchables actor’s death in 2003.
Cosgrove and Meurer have been keen to revamp the show for some time and have kept an updated web presence for the show with new cases. In a Reddit AMA in August 2017, Cosgrove said, “We are actively talking to a couple of broadcasters who have shown interest, and we’re very optimistic that we’ll have something by way of new episodes by the end of the year. It’s too early to go into much detail, but we’ve had our research producers look into possible stories, and they’ve found some excellent ones which can be ready to go quickly.”
The order is the latest high-profile Netflix series for Levy’s 21 Laps Entertainment. The company produces four shows for the SVOD service after signing an exclusive multi-year deal in December 2017; Stranger Things, which recently wrapped its third season, Shadow and Bone, an eight-episode series based on Leigh Bardugo’s bestselling Shadow and Bone and Six of Crow Grishaverse fantasy novels, from Bird Box writer Eric Heisserer and I Am Not Okay With This, created by The End of the F***king World’s Jonathan Entwistle and Christy Hall.
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