Netflix Rebooting ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ With ‘Stranger Things’ Producer

Netflix is bringing back Unsolved Mysteries, the long-running series that mixed the supernatural with true crime, with the help of Stranger Things executive producer Shawn Levy, the streaming service said Friday.

Levy will oversee the new show, which will be produced by his 21 Laps Entertainment with Netflix and Cosgrove-Meurer Productions, which ran the original series. Creators John Cosgrove and Terry Dunn Meurer are executive producers, along with original series director Robert Wise. Meurer and Wise will act as showrunners, reports Deadline.

The 12-episode show will include a mix of re-enactments and the documentary format to cover unsolved and unexplained paranormal events. Each episode will focus on a different mystery.

The original show’s format also included actors re-enacting the mysteries, with family members and police interviewed in between.

Levy’s 21 Laps Entertainment has an exclusive deal with Netflix, and produced Stranger Things. The company is also working on a series based on Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone, and I Am Not Okay With This, by The End of the F***king World creators Jonathan Entwistle and Christy Hall.

The late Robert Stack hosted the show between 1987 and 2002, and the late Dennis Farina hosted a Spike revival from 2008 to 2010. Unsolved Mysteries spent its first 10 years on NBC before CBS picked it up for two years. Lifetime ran the last episodes with Stack, who died in 2003.

Cosgrove and Meurer have been open about trying to revive the show. In August 2017, Cosgrove told fans on Reddit they were in active discussions with networks.

“We are actively talking to a couple of broadcasters who have shown interest, and we’re very optimistic that we’ll have something by way of new episodes by the end of the year,” Cosgrove said. “It’s too early to go into much detail, but we’ve had our research producers look into possible stories, and they’ve found some excellent ones which can be ready to go quickly.”

Unsolved Mysteries was nominated for the Outstanding Informational Series Emmy six times. Select episodes are available on Amazon Prime. While the show ended years ago, the Unsolved Mysteries website remained active and continues to post new mysteries.

Some mysteries were solved during the show’s run and many episodes later provided updates.

“I think there’s an appetite for true crime that wasn’t being met when we started the show,” Cosgrove told fans on Reddit. “The fact that we did a variety of types of cases gave viewers a chance to experience different kinds of stories. As time went along, the updates became very popular, and viewers felt they had a stake in the show.”

“When we first began producing the show, we weren’t sure if an audience would feel satisfied at the end of an hours worth of stories that weren’t solved,” Meurer added. “But as it turned out, stories did get solved, so we could provide updates and the mysterious details of all the stories kept people talking long after the show aired.”

Photo credit: Netflix