‘Love & Hip Hop’: Will One of the Shows in the Franchise Get Cut?
Love & Hip Hop has many series on the air. In a recent interview, the franchise creator Mona Scott-Young spoke about her hope that all four series in the franchise will be able to return.
‘Love & Hip Hop’ has four series on the air right now
Since its debut in 2011, the Love & Hip Hop franchise has produced four different series. Love & Hip Hop: New York first debuted in 2011. This was following by the debut of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta in 2012. 2014 saw the debut of Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood. A few years passed before the introduction of the fourth series in the franchise, Love & Hip Hop: Miami, which debuted in 2018.
Mona Scott-Young is expanding her empire
In an interview with Deadline, Scott-Young discussed the many different projects that she has in the works. Scott-Young is working on both scripted and unscripted projects about a number of topics.
The series in development include one on Shaka Zulu, a drama series focusing on the Aaron Hernandez case from the perspective of his wife, and a series with Black Lives Matter activist Tamika D. Mallory.
“This is a special, unique, life-changing moment in all of our lives and especially for people of color, and when I look at how it’s being captured I’m like this entire movement is happening on Instagram being captured by cell phones,” he said. What will we have to look back on, and so we rallied some of our shooters and we’ve been following Tamika and have been on the ground with her and have really told the story of this reluctant leader of sorts. She’s been thrust into the forefront of this movement and then becomes a voice of the people, not by choice but by necessity and for me it was an incredible honor to be able to lend my skillsets for capturing this moment in time and memorializing it.”
ViacomCBS will now produce the shows in-house
Scott calls the franchise’s success “lightning in a bottle.” In an interview, she also noted that she doesn’t handle physical production of the show. But now, ViacomCBS has brought the production in house, as companies include Big Fish Entertainment and Eastern TV once handled the production.
“The network has made a decision to take those productions in-house, so they have been gearing up and backing up in a way that will allow for them to do that,” she said.
Scott-Young also noted the production impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have allowed them to think about the show in a new way. “It won’t change my role in the way that I work with them but there is a process now that’s taking place, and also of course, the caution, the precautions that need to be taken with figuring out how to reimagine a docuseries and do it while adhering to safety protocols and finding a different way of making the show,” she said.
The future of ‘Love & Hip Hop’
The casts of the shows always have new additions as well as people leaving, but Scott-Young hints that storytelling may also be different with this new shift. In the same breath, Scott-Young said the hope is to have all shows to come back, which may suggest that there is the potential for a shake-up.
“I kind of embrace the challenge and see it as a new frontier to be conquered,” she added. “The beauty of it is each city has managed to establish its own fan base and has its own place in the zeitgeist and with the fans, and, of course my hope is that all four cities come back, there has been nothing to indicate otherwise. They all have fared really well for the network in terms of ratings and they’ve been the cornerstone of the programming there so I don’t see that changing.”
Only time will tell if all of the shows will return as many shows head back into production. It is unclear if any of the Love & Hip Hop shows have been filming scenes during the pandemic.
