‘Party Of Five’ Reboot Adds Poignant Deportation Twist

1990s family drama Party of Five is getting a reboot, and the show will focus on siblings seeing their mother and father be deported from the U.S.

PARTY OF FIVE REBOOT TO TACKLE DEPORTATION

Freeform, formerly ABC Family, ordered a put pilot to test out the reboot – with put pilot meaning that there will be a penalty if the episode does not air. When the show left off in 2000, the Salinger siblings were worried that their parents were killed in a car accident – this time around, the Buendias family is the focus, and the kids worry after mom and dad are taken from their U.S. home and sent back to their native Mexico.

The original series ran for six seasons and starred Matthew Fox, Neve Campbell, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lacey Chabert and Scott Wolf as its leads. Actors and actresses have yet to be pegged for the new reboot roles. Amy Lippman and Chris Keyser, who created the original series, are both on board for the new pilot, as is writer Michal Zebede, who penned The Humbling and wrote for TV series Castle. Rodrigo Garcia will direct the pilot episode and serve as executive producer.

After the original Party of Five aired, Lippman went on to create In Treatment, Masters of Sex and Ruth & Erica. Keyser has been involved in the creation of Tyrant and The Last Tycoon.

Party of Five isn’t the first reboot to take a stab at deportation and immigration. Netflix’s One Day at a Time turned the Coopers of the 1970s into the Cuban-American Alvarezes, which saw children become parentless thanks to deportation laws. With Party of Five, we could see topics like DACA and the Dreamers come into play, as it is unclear if the siblings will have been born in Mexico or in the U.S.

While Party of Five originally aired on Fox, the new show will not be brought to the network, instead being hosted by Freeform. Fox has its own similar show in the works. Diane Guerrero, who stars in Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, wrote a childhood memoir called In the Country We Love, which is being adapted into a television screenplay. It is being put into production at Fox.