Fox remakes France 2’s Witnesses

The original Witnesses has been sold around the world

US broadcaster Fox is adapting a detective drama that was first produced for France 2, with Melissa Scrivner-Love (Fear the Walking Dead) attached to write.

Created by Hervé Hadmar and Marc Herpoux, Witnesses was produced by Fabienne Servan-Schreiber and Jean-Pierre Fayer for French prodco Cinétévé.

Fox has commissioned a pilot script for the US version, with 20th Century Fox TV producing alongside Stampede Ventures. The executive producers are Greg Silverman, Paul Shapiro and Mark-Paul Gosselaar.

The show follows a detective who must work with an old colleague she dislikes to solve a murder spree case.

The format is shopped by Newen Distribution, which has sold the original series into 103 countries. Buyers have included Netflix and Amazon in the US, NRK in Norway and Hot in Israel.

Fox has been revamping its senior management teams over recent months after Disney received the go-ahead to acquire 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets.

The resultant ‘New Fox’ operation, focused largely on news and sports, will include the Fox channel but it will lose its in-house studio, 20th Century Fox TV, which produces much of its content and is behind the Witnesses remake.

In related news, Norway’s NRK is adapting reality series The First Years, which was originally produced by Newen-owned Tuvalu Media for NPO Zapp in the Netherlands.

The show is being produced by SVT Denmark and is aimed at teens, using both scripted and unscripted elements to explore the first year at secondary school.

It has already been produced by DR Ultra in Denmark and SVT Barnkanalen in Sweden, and for the BBC in the UK. It has also recently been optioned by Bunim Murray for the US market.