'Runway’ Finally Cleared for Lifetime
by Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 4/6/2009 2:00:00 AM
Project Runway will finally get to strut on Lifetime.
The fashion competition show, which has been held up in a legal thicket involving the women’s programmer, NBC Universal and The Weinstein Co., will debut sometime this summer after the parties reached a settlement. Fourteen installments have been shot.
The Weinstein Co., the series producer, has agreed to pay NBCU for the right to move Project Runway from its home on Bravo. Deal terms were not disclosed
The show’s sixth season, originally set to air last November and then pushed back to a January launch, became stuck in limbo after NBCU won a preliminary injunction against The Weinstein Co. over contract violations. In turn, Lifetime looked to move the case to a federal venue, filing suit against The Weinstein Co., NBCU and Bravo. As such, the show’s debut on the women’s programmer was delayed.
“I couldn’t be more excited that Lifetime will bring its viewers an amazing, all-new season of Project Runway this summer,” Lifetime Networks CEO Andrea Wong said in a statement.
The Weinstein Co. chairman Harvey Weinstein also said in a statement: “We’re thrilled to be launching our relationship with Lifetime with this groundbreaking cable deal that includes the next five years of Project Runway, our new spinoff show Models of the Runway and the development of Project Pygmalion, along with a package of our movies.”
