Discovery Inc. wants to rebuild Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, one of TV’s most durable reality concepts.
The company’s HGTV cable network plans to produce 10 new episodes of the former ABC series, featuring some of its many home experts as part of the process. The new episodes are expected to debut in late 2019, and HGTV has also secured the U.S. and Caribbean rights to air 100 episodes of the original series that ran on ABC for nine seasons between 2003 and 2012.
“We like to come up with our own formats and our own ideas, but every now and then, there’s something out there that just makes so much sense form a brand perspective that we have to do it,” says Kathleen Finch, chief lifestyle brands officer for Discovery, which last year acquired HGTV when it bought Scripps Networks. “‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’ is such an iconic show. It’s an emotional story centered around a house. There is real drama, and real stakes around a home being rebuilt.”
At its peak, during the 2004-2005 TV season, the series garnered an average of around 16 million total viewers on Sunday nights.
Ty Pennington, the carpenter and model, gained a wider profile by hosting the original “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” Finch says executives have yet to decide upon a host for the new episodes.
