Project Runway will once again be produced by Magical Elves when the show returns to Bravo for Season 17.
ADVERTISEMENT
Bravo launched Project Runway in 2004 and aired it through 2008 before Lifetime obtained it in a high-profile, five-year deal that Bravo's NBC Universal parent company attempted to stop via a lawsuit.
During its original run on Bravo, The Weinstein Company had hired the Magical Elves production company -- which still produces Top Chef and other reality shows for Bravo -- to produce Project Runway.
However, Magical Elves didn't follow the show to Lifetime, and Lifetime's editions of Project Runway over the past decade have been produced by Bunim-Murray Productions.
Well, Project Runway, Bravo and Magical Elves are reuniting for next season, which is currently in pre-production and will premiere in 2019.
ADVERTISEMENT
"Project Runway has truly come full circle with the Magical Elves on board," Bravo executive Shari Levine said in a statement.
"Jane Lipsitz and Dan Cutforth have been incredible producing partners with us through the years on multiple fronts. We blazed a trail with the first seasons of Project Runway on Bravo, and now look forward to beginning the next evolution of the franchise with the team that was so instrumental in developing the format."
Bravo announced in May that Project Runway would be coming back to its original home on Bravo after being on Lifetime for 10 years. However, whether Project Runway co-hosts Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn and the show's judges will also be part of the show's new "evolution" remains unclear.
"We could not be more thrilled to return as the producers of Project Runway," Magical Elves co-founder Dan Cutforth said in a statement. "We built the series from the ground up with Bravo and it is part of the DNA of our company."
Fellow Magical Elves co-founder, Jane Lipsitz, added, "Dan and I have always loved Runway so much and we can't wait to return to it with a renewed creative energy. We are really excited to reflect some of the incredible changes that have happened in the fashion world since we last produced the series."
ADVERTISEMENT
Project Runway's return to Bravo is through an agreement with Lantern Entertainment LLC, whose bid to acquire the assets of the series' The Weinstein Company production company was approved by a Delaware bankruptcy court on May 8.
Although Lifetime announced in 2016 it had renewed Project Runway for three additional seasons, the network's parent company, A&E Television Networks, terminated its contract for the series in January in the wake of the sexual abuse allegations against The Weinstein Company founder Harvey Weinstein, according to Deadline Hollywood.
Project Runway's upcoming seventeenth season is part of the network's previously-announced plans to expand original series to seven nights a week beginning this fall.
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski