Several high-profile scripted and reality series will launch new seasons this week as the halfway mark of the summer Tv season approaches.

VH1 will bring back the off-MTV horror series Scream:Resurrection for its third season on July 8. The six-part series, based on the popular Scream horror film series, will air over three consecutive nights, according to VH1.

FX will debut the third season of its drama series Snowfall on July 10. The series, co-created and executive produced by the late John Singleton, chronicles the 1980s crack epidemic in Los Angeles. 

On the reality side, MTV’s Jersey Shore Family Vacation returns for its third season July 11, while BBC America debuts the 27th season of reality car series Top Gear on July 14.

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting this week on cable networks and streaming services:

July 9 -- I Love You, Now Die (docuseries) -- HBO

July 10 -- Family Reunion (comedy series) -- Netflix

July 10 -- Florida Girls (comedy series) -- POP

July 10 -- Harlots (returning series) -- Hulu

July 11-- Escape the Night (returning series) -- YouTube

July 12 -- Point Blank (drama series) -- Netflix

July 12 -- Shangri-La (docuseries) -- Showtime

July 14 -- Sweetbitter (returning series) -- Starz

Why on earth would television audiences be drawn to a 40-year-old sci-fi Western, a 30-year-old buddy-cop movie or an 11-year-old horror flick?

Hollywood movie titles like Westworld, Lethal Weapon and Wolf Creek have found new life on smaller screens — including the TV — as original scripted series, as TV networks seek out original content that pops in a crowded entertainment marketplace.

While the trend isn’t new — networks have tapped the silver screen over the years to produce such hit series as M*A*S*H, The Odd Couple and In the Heat of the Night — film adaptations have taken on more relevance in a crowded television marketplace that features more than 400 current scripted shows offered by cable, broadcast and digital streaming services.

“There’s an audience for it, and the compelling and complicated characters have already been developed for it, which gives you a much better chance to succeed,” said Ben Mankiewicz, on-air host for Turner Classic Movies. ”If the demographic that you’re seeking is already aware and interested in either the particular franchise or characters, obviously you have an even better chance at success.”

New HBO series Westworld is only one of several debuting shows adapted from theatrical films that have made their way to the “small” screen this year. Others include Fox’s redo of the 1980s movie franchise Lethal Weapon — currently one of the highest-rated freshman series among adults 18-49 on broadcast TV this season — and Pop’s reimagining of the 2005 Australian horror film Wolf Creek, which debuted last month.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

“Everyone is looking for any angle that makes their property stand out and that has any familiarity with the audience,” said Mina Lefevre, senior vice president of scripted programming at MTV, which has successfully adapted two horror/ thriller movies into series in Teen Wolf and Scream. “It’s another element that really helps the show.”

The key to adapting a movie franchise for television is to maintain the film’s main themes that appeal to hardcore fans, but to reimagine the story in a way that expands the franchise’s appeal to newer, and hopefully younger, viewers, programming executives said.

“I would be wary of adapting something and then banking on the original [film’s] fans making or breaking the show,” HBO president of programming Casey Bloys said. “I don’t think that’s enough in this competitive world.”

During July’s Television Critics Association press tour, Westworld executive producer Jonathan Nolan told reporters that the original 1973 Michael Crichton film explores an issue that has become even more relevant decades later: the complexities of artificial intelligence.

Westworld executive producers Nolan and Lisa Joy retained the original movie’s Wild West-themed adult amusement park backdrop, where humans interact with lifelike, artificially intelligent beings, but twisted the series’ point of view from human to robot. That allows viewers to explore the series’ moral underpinnings from a different perspective.

“That’s an example of [the producers] taking a movie and embracing its themes, but having their own spin on it,” Bloys said. “They were always very clear that they wanted to switch the protagonists from the humans in the movie to the robots in the TV show.”

So far, that twist has worked. Westworld has averaged 12 million viewers across multiple platforms, according to HBO, while generating positive social media chatter and critical acclaim.

HBO isn’t the only network to create a whole new world based on a successful Hollywood movie while sticking to the source material’s basic premise. A&E successfully reimagined the iconic 1960 Alfred Hitchock film Psycho in Bates Motel, a prequel about the teen years of Norman Bates, Psycho’s likeable-but-sadistic adult villain. It even gave life to Norman’s dead mother, Norma Bates, earning actress Vera Farmiga an Emmy nomination in 2014 for her portrayal of the role.

NEW, FAMILIAR STORIES

“The beauty with doing a show like Bates Motel is that we have adapted the story and made it our own while not alienating the core fans of Psycho,” A&E executive vice president and head of programming Elaine Frontain Bryant said. “It’s a genius idea, because you know how it ends, yet viewers fell in love with Norman. It’s like watching a slow-moving train and you want to say, ‘No, Norman, don’t,’ even though you inevitably know what’s going to happen.”

Bryant said the show’s fifth and final season, premiering next year, will move even closer to the original Psycho film by introducing Marion Crane, the movie’s tragic lead character originally played by Janet Leigh. Pop star Rihanna will take on the role in the series.

On the flip side, Starz’s Ash vs Evil Dead, based on the 1981 horror film The Evil Dead, picks up the story 30 years later, with Bruce Campbell reprising his role as unlikely demon-killing hero Ash Williams. The network was able to capitalize on Evil Dead’s passionate cult following, creating a series that was renewed for its third season just last month, according to Carmi Zlotnik, managing director of Starz.

“There’s a fan base that’s had this pent-up desire to see the continuation of the story and the character that they love,” he said.

FX took the reimagining of a Hollywood film even further in 2014 by turning the Academy Award-winning crime thriller Fargo into an anthology series, with each season set in a different era with a new storyline and cast. The sophomore series, which won an Outstanding Miniseries Emmy Award in 2014, will return for season three in 2017.

“When we developed Fargo, we wanted to make sure it wasn’t an adaptation of the tone of the movie,” Nick Grad, FX’s original programming president, said. “We can do something really different and original with a really strong point of view that happens to have their origins in a movie franchise, but the most important thing for us is quality and originality. We’re pretty reluctant to do an adaptation of something you’ve seen before.”

BUILDING ON BRANDS

For networks looking to break into the scripted series arena, launching with an already branded franchise — as Pop did last month with horror series Wolf Creek — is invaluable in trying to draw and retain viewers.

The series takes the 2005 Wolf Creek movie plot, which follows demented killer Mick Taylor as he murders three backpackers in the Australian outback, and turns it on its head. The series, which premiered last month on the former TV Guide Channel, chronicles the hunting of Taylor by a young American tourist whose family was recently butchered by the Australian killer.

“The content world is more cluttered than ever, so if you can base something on intellectual property that people already are familiar with puts you one step ahead of the competition, especially for a smaller network,” Pop president Brad Schwartz said. “Having some familiarity for a title gives you a bit of a head start, versus all the work you have to do to explain a show that no one has ever heard of before.”

Despite the built-in advantages, some movie adaptations have tanked. CBS in May cancelled its freshman series Rush Hour, based on the Chris Tucker-Jackie Chan film franchise, due to lackluster ratings. In July, ABC pulled the plug on Mike Epps-starrer Uncle Buck, based on the 1989 John Hughes film starring John Candy, after one season.

A&E cancelled its Omen sequel series Damien this past May, after one season. The series followed Damien Thorn, the movie’s devil child, as a 30-year-old photographer unaware of his satanic past.

Despite the marketing and promotional advantage that shows like Damien may have, there’s no guaranteed ticket to success, Bryant said. “It was a franchise that maybe didn’t have the same type of appeal [as Psycho],” she said.

When transitioning a movie franchise to television, TCM’s Mankiewicz said networks must walk a fine line of providing a different take on the familiar plot or characters of that movie without upsetting its core fans.

“You have to make it compelling, but if you do create a compelling story and alter the universe significantly, you’ll get some very angry fan reaction from Twitter,” he said.

Added Starz’s Zlotnik: “As producers and network executives we have to take our Hippocratic oath: ‘Thou shalt do no harm to the property that you’re working with.’ For the fans, you have to meet or exceed their expectations in order to be successful.”

MORE COMING

It’s a risk that more network executives are willing to take. Already on the docket for 2017 are scripted series based on Spike Lee’s 1986 independent film She’s Gotta Have It (Netflix) and the dance-based movie franchise Step Up (YouTube).

“There are a lot of these fantastic tit les that have not been explored on television and now they can be,” MTV’s Lefevre said. “We’re really excited to take these properties that have been more specific to the big screen.”

Added TCM’s Mankiewicz: “I’m sure there a lot of writers mining moderately successful movies from the 1970s and 1980s that are right now trying to turn them into TV shows.”

Coming Attractions

A partial list of movies that have been turned into TV series pilots orwill launch as full-fledged series in 2017:

Show                                     Distributor                                           Status

She’s Gotta Have It . . . . . . . . . . . Netflix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Series

American Gigolo . . . . . . . . . . . Showtime . . . . . . . . . . . . In Development

First Wives Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . TV Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Pilot

Heathers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TV Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Pilot

War of the Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . .  MTV . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   In Development

Step Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . YouTube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Series

The Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Syfy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Pilot

Get Shorty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  EPIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Series

SOURCE :Multichannel News research

Episodes from Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars and MTV’s Scream generated the most tweets of any television show yesterday, according to Nielsen.

Liars garnered 65,000 tweets from 19,000 unique Twitter authors, while 6,000 Twitter users posted 34,000 tweets about Scream Tuesday night, according to Nielsen’s daily Twitter TV ratings.

NBC’s America’s Got Talent, OWN’s The Have and the Have Nots and POP’s iMPACT Wrestling rounded out the top five most tweeted shows on Tuesday.

MLB Network's Cincinnati Reds/Chicago Cubs baseball telecast was the most tweeted live sports event for the day, according to Nielsen

Can you make an old hit new again?

Several cable networks and OTT providers are hoping to appeal to the mature end of the millennial demographic — that is 25-to-34-year-olds — by rebooting or remaking classic 1980s and 1990s TV shows.

Cartoon Network has reanimated The Powerpuff Girls, returning the characters to its schedule with a new series some 11 years after the original ended. Netflix’s Fuller House updated the 1990s ABC sitcom Full House, with the Tanner kids now grown up and raising children themselves. MTV has reimagined Scream, the 1990s horror-movie franchise that put Courteney Cox of Friends on the big screen in its first iteration.

And Disney Channel is remixing a rendition of Girl Meets World — featuring the now-grown kid stars of 1990s sitcom Boy Meets World.

All of these shows aim to appeal to busy millennials who are increasingly viewing content on nontraditional television platforms.

Today’s millennial viewers are often defined as cable cord-cutting, binge-watching viewers who devour the latest eclectic short-form content via digital platforms. Older members of the massive 16-to-34-year-old demo, though, still watch a lot of their TV the way baby boomers and Generation Xers do, gravitating to the long-form, classic content they grew up with back when cable was still cool.

ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL

The trend reflects a realization that all millennials are not the same, and not every YouTube video or short-form show will appeal to all consumers in the demo.

“All of these networks are looking at the millennial audience, and some are recognizing that [older millennials] really like reminiscing about their childhood,” David Quinn, senior brand lead for digital marketing firm Beamly, said. “It was a wonderful time and some millennials embrace that.”

Like boomers and Gen Xers, older millennials are finding that the responsibilities that come with work and family leave less time for entertainment. And, like those older demos, they’re often drawn to familiar content that resonates.

Nostalgia can be a big driver for remakes of movie and TV hits that have built-in audiences but may be sitting unused in the crowded soup of subscription VOD platforms. The challenge, of course, is to parlay that nostalgia and bring in the old crowd, as well as new viewers, without it all seeming tacky.

It’s a tricky challenge for TV’s demographic marketers, who parse the world in groups of boomers, Gen Xers and millennials.

And older millennials, particularly those with families, also watch more traditional television than their younger demographic cohorts. Millennials starting a family watch more than three hours a day of live TV — that’s over an hour more than single millenials consume, according to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report for fourth-quarter 2015.

That boosts the value of franchises that date back to older millennials’ childhoods, such as Cartoon Network’s The Powerpuff Girls and Nickelodeon’s Hey Arnold!. Nick has set a Hey Arnold! special that picks up where the final episode of the animated series in 2002 left off .

Nickelodeon Franchise Properties senior vice president of content development Chris Viscardi said that franchises like Hey Arnold! and 1990s game show Legends of the Hidden Temple — which the network is turning into a live-action TV movie — give Nickelodeon a leg up on other entertainment networks trying to reach the elusive audience group.

Millennials with families are also more likely than not to introduce their kids to their childhood TV favorites, Viscardi said. That helps Nick reach out to a new generation of viewers.

“There is a huge millennial love for those series, so we know that millennial fans who grew up on them will come back,” Viscardi said. “There are some things inherent in our properties that we know a new generation of fans would love also.”

Nick is exploring several other older titles that it might resurrect and develop new episodes for, although Viscardi would not provide specific details.

Shows such as Girl Meets World — less a reboot than a 2014 spinoff of the 1993-2000 ABC series Boy Meets World, featuring grownup characters from the first series with children of their own — allows Disney Channel to reach a wide audience of both adults and kids, Sean Coccia, executive vice president of business operations and general manager for Disney Channels Worldwide, said.

To further encourage co-viewing, Disney will resurrect DuckTales, a 1987-1990 syndicated animated series built around Donald Duck’s nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie and his Uncle Scrooge, for its Disney XD network in 2017. And Disney Channel later this will year premiere Adventures in Babysitting, an original movie based loosely on the 1987 theatrical fi lm of the same name.

FAMILY AFFAIR

“For Disney Channel, it is not hard to reach these millennials if we deliver content that provides them with the opportunity to share an experience and time with their families,” Cocchia said. “Social media has also helped us by giving these millennial families platforms to talk about what they love and what they are seeing in the new storylines and characters.”

Classic entertainment franchises don’t always initially appeal to the older end of the millennial audience. MTV’s Scream series — based on the horror movie franchise of the same name launched 20 years ago — had its biggest audience among younger 16-to-24-year-olds during its freshman season last summer, according to MTV senior vice president of scripted programming Mina Lefevre.

Scream will return for its sophomore season in May.

“[Younger millennials] knew about Scream — some of them watched it and some of them didn’t — but they all knew about the value and iconic nature of Scream,” Lefevre said. “For us to reinvent it for them is where we stood. We thought we could make it as appealing and iconic to them as it was to [older millennials].”

Cartoon Network’s Miller said that networks looking to reach the full swath of millennials will ultimately have to market and promote differently to the younger and older segments of the demo. “There is absolutely a difference in how we create content for different audience segments because they all consume content differently,” Miller said. “We’ve devoted a lot of time and resources to really understanding all of our audiences and how they consume media — including millennials of all different life stages, not just ages — and we develop our strategies accordingly.”

For the older end of millennials, Beamly’s Quinn said the trend toward revitalizing 1990s classic programming is only beginning as distributors look for ways to reach an elusive audience that is looking for some familiarity to go alongside all the new content offered to them.

“I definitely think this is a trend that we’ll see continue going forward,” he said. “I think it makes perfect sense because if a network is looking to create entertainment in a crowded marketplace it’s nice to create entertainment that has a built-in audience.”

MTV tomorrow (June 30) will launch a new series based on the iconic Scream horror movie franchise of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The millennial-targeted network looks to give a contemporary look to Scream, which has grossed more than $600 million at the box office over four films.

I recently talked to MTV senior vice president of scripted programming Mina Lefevre, who pointed to some key themes about the new series that she wants Scream fans and horror aficionados to know about the show.

The series is not Scream 5: "It’s very important not to just do Scream 5 but figure out how to re-invent this so that it resonates with our audience and resembles where thriller and horror is today versus where it was when it was created. To that point we wanted to make sure we held true to the key elements that we all love, including the iconic humor, the contemporary references and obviously the horror/thriller part, but really try to reinvent it. That’s what the series is – it is a reinvention keeping true to some of the core iconic things that made it so big -- but not taking the original characters and making them 10 years older."

It will have a contemporary feel: "I wanted a reinvention of Scream the way Bates Motel reinvented (Psycho). If you do it smartly while keeping true to the things that were appealing overall to the original – the thriller/ horror aspect as well as the humor and the iconic personality in the killer -- I think that it will be satisfying to those fans. There’s also a mask component – I feel like it’s a big, iconic part of the original. We have done our version of it for the series -- it’s not exactly the same mask because we have to reinvent it to where horror and thriller genre is today, which is a litter darker and more sophisticated."

It will appeal to millennial viewers: "When Scream came to us it was exciting because it’s been a huge franchise in the horror and thriller space for many years. The idea of trying to do something for this generation in a tv series that the movies did when I was younger was very appealing. The idea of reinventing the franchise became really exciting, especially for our audience – the audience that watches this type of thriller is smack in our demo of 16-34 year olds."

From creepy robots in AMC’s Humans to masked murderers in MTV’s Scream to mentally connected freaks in Netflix’s Sense8, networks are leaning into horror flicks to scare up ratings.

Six new horror, sci-fi or supernatural series are scheduled to debut in June alone, showcasing the breadth and depth of the genre. Along with the aforementioned series, BBC America will debut on June 13 a supernatural-themed series, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, in which two magicians battle to establish dominance in 19th-century England.

Syfy will roll out two action thrillers set in space: Dark Matter (premiering June 12), in which a spaceship crew must find a way to survive after they wake up with no memories of who they are or why they’re on board; and Killjoy (June 19), which follows the exploits of three space-faring bounty hunters.

Those June premieres will join two returning genre series from TNT — the plague-themed The Last Ship, which was last year’s most-watched freshman summer series, and the final season of alien-invasion drama Falling Skies — as well as ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars.

HOT GENRE

Horror TV has been hot for a few years now, with the success of such shows as AMC’s The Walking Dead — the most-watched series on cable — as well as Showtime’s Penny Dreadful, FX’s The Strain and American Horror Story, and Netflix’s Hemlock Grove.

MTV, which has already mined the horror genre to success with Teen Wolf, will take another stab at horror with a reimagining of the popular 1990s Scream movie franchise, senior vice president of scripted programming Mina Lefevre said. The series, which debuts June 30, will not be an extension of the movie franchise, but will feature elements of the movie with a more contemporary look and storyline.

“We have to reinvent it to where the horror and thriller genre is today, which is a little darker and more sophisticated,” she said.

Still, Lefevre said she believes the movie franchise and the genre itself remain extremely popular with MTV’s core millennial audience.

“Television right now is where we’re breaking new ground with content, so the idea of reinventing a franchise like Scream became exciting, especially for our audience,” she said. “The viewers who do watch these types of horror movies are smack in our 18-34 demo, and given where TV is at — where it’s doing so much interesting genre work — it would be great to bring it to our audience.”

The incredible pace of technological advancement has created new, horrific real-life scenarios that are resonating with millennials and younger viewers, ABC Family executive vice president of programming and development Karey Burke said.

The network’s new series Stitchers, in which a covert government agency employs a college student to tap into the memories of dead people as a way of circumventing crimes, garnered a respectable 1.2 million viewers in its June 2 debut.

“The main character is a flawed woman whose flaws actually serve as an unlikely skill set … she is a character who is [more] comfortable in technology than she is in a relationship with other human beings, which makes her unique and appealing to our millennial audience,” Burke said.

USA Network’s Mr. Robot, a psychological thriller about a cybersecurity engineer/hacker recruited by a mysterious group to destroy companies digitally, is another series that taps into the interests — and fears — of technologysavvy millennial viewers, USA Network executive vice president of original series Jackie de Crinis said.

“Mr. Robot is not a super hero … but everything in this series can [happen] and is happening today,” de Crinis said. “It’s reflective of millennial cyber-hackers of today who have the capacity to break down these systems and wreak havoc. It’s literally a new form of terror for viewers.”

ALIENS AND ROBOTS

USA will play in the traditional sci-fi/horror genre this fall with Colony, which follows residents of an alien-occupied Los Angeles.

AMC is betting that potential advancements in artificial intelligence will spur interest in its new series Humans, in which ”synths,” or sophisticated robots, are the must-have device in every home, but often with unintended consequences.

“We feel strongly there is a passionate sci-fi audience out there that is fascinated by the topic of AI and the potential impact it has on our future” AMC senior vice president of international programming Kristin Jones said, “yet we also believe the storylines in Humans will draw in broader drama fans.”