Fox Family welcomes 'Freaks'
Cabler picks up rights to D'works series
The cabler, which announced the news at the semiannual Television Critics Assn. Tour, has acquired multi-year off-network rights to the series from DreamWorks Television, including three never-before-broadcast episodes.
There's also a slim chance that Fox Family could produce original episodes of the teen series, which follows the lives of two siblings who attend a Michigan high school in 1980.
"I'd cut off my leg if we could make new shows," said Fox Family's exec VP programming and development Rob Sorcher, who added that it would be a difficult financial challenge to overcome.
"As a cable network, we would be financially unable to create a one-hour show of this quality. We'd have to figure out another way to do it, but I'd love to do that," he said.
After NBC canceled the show, the net gave DreamWorks permission to shop the show to other nets.
MTV was reportedly interested, but the music cabler apparently wasn't prepared to pay a high-enough license fee for the skein.
Fox Family declined comment on the financial details of its deal.
Fox Family plans to air "Freaks" on Tuesdays, with two episodes back-to-back beginning Aug. 29. "Freaks" joins the list of offnet series that Fox Family has acquired recently, including "Early Edition," "Providence" and "7th Heaven."
