Reboot Fever Continues To Spread With Freeform Preparing A New Version Of ‘Party Of Five’

Reboots, reboots, reboots! Everywhere we turn, it’s reboots, though that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes it means we get to catch up with some old friends, like The Conners or Will & Grace, and other times we’re getting old friends with new faces (Magnum, P.I.). Well now it’s the return of Party of Five, courtesy of Freeform, and it’s promising to be pretty different than the 1994-2000 version that ran on FOX. That show starred Scott Wolf, Matthew Fox, Neve Campbell, Lacey Chabert, and a number of twins as the youngest Salinger sibling (with Jennifer Love Hewitt playing Matthew’s girlfriend).

The concept of the original show is that the five Salingers are forced to fend for themselves in the aftermath of their parents dying in a car accident due to a drunk driver. In a statement regarding the new pilot order, executive producers Amy Lippman and Charles Keyser explained, “Twenty-five years ago, we imagined a story about five kids navigating the world after the untimely death of their parents. Today, stories of families being separated, children having to raise themselves in the wake of their parents’ deportations don’t require any imagination; they are everywhere. This new iteration of Party of Five isn’t a retread of the original; it’s a whole new look at kids trying to parent each other in the wake of circumstances beyond their control, yet learning a similar lesson: that families persist no matter how great the obstacles.”

The new Party of Five will embrace diversity as well, as the Salingers have been replaced by the five Buendias siblings and follows them after their parents are deported to Mexico (which would seem to at least hold the promise of an original cast reunion at some point). 

Karey Burke, Freeform’s Executive Vice President of Programming and Development, enthuses, “From the moment we heard that Amy and Chris were updating their iconic series with this timely and powerful twist, we knew we had to have this pilot. We’re honored to be the home for the next, brilliant iteration of their vision.”