The CW orders Roswell reboot

The CW has given a pilot order to a reboot of Roswell that has an immigration twist, EW has learned.

The project, which hails from Originals writer Carina Adly MacKenzie, is based on the Melinda Metz book Roswell High that also spawned the original Jason Katims drama, which starred Shiri Appleby and Jason Behr, and aired on both The WB and UPN from 1999-2002.

Here’s the logline: “After reluctantly returning to her tourist-trap hometown of Roswell, New Mexico, the daughter of undocumented immigrants discovers a shocking truth about her teenage crush who is now a police officer: he’s an alien who has kept his unearthly abilities hidden his entire life. She protects his secret as the two reconnect and begin to investigate his origins, but when a violent attack and long-standing government cover-up point to a greater alien presence on Earth, the politics of fear and hatred threaten to expose him and destroy their deepening romance.”

MacKenzie will write and executive producer with Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Lawrence Bender, and Kevin Kelly Brown, who was an executive producer on the original series.

The news comes just days after The CW also ordered a pilot for a reboot of Charmed, which has drawn some ire among the original cast.

The network also gave pilot orders to five other projects, including Ben Stiller project In the Dark, which tells the story of a flawed and irreverent blind woman who is the only “witness” to the murder of her drug-dealing friend. After the police dismiss her story, she sets out with her dog, Pretzel, to find the killer while also managing her colorful dating life and the job she hates at Breaking Blind — the guide dog school owned by her overprotective parents. Corinne Kingsbury will write and executive produce with Stiller, Jackie Cohn, and Nicky Weinstock.

Greg Berlanti has yet another project set at the CW with Spencer, which tells the story of a rising high school football player from South Central L.A. who is recruited to play for Beverly Hills High, and depicts the wins, losses, and struggles of two families from vastly different worlds — Compton and Beverly Hills — as they collide. The story is inspired by the life of pro football player Spencer Paysinger.

Based on the novel by Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip follows a woman who — after her husband tries to kill her on what she thought was a romantic cruise to celebrate their second wedding anniversary — teams with a jaded ex-cop to exact her own twisted brand of revenge on her cheating spouse, and winds up uncovering a wider conspiracy in the process. Russel Friend and Garrett Lerner will write and executive producer with Peter Traugott and Rachel Kaplan.

Playing Dead is a dysfunctional family dramedy about a mortician and his son whose lives are turned upside down when the woman who abandoned them 15 years ago returns and asks them to fake her death. Rina Mimouni and Josh Reims will write and executive produce with Tariq Jalil and Lucas Carter.

In The End of the World As We Know It, when a prison spaceship carrying the universe’s most deadly aliens crashes in Southern California, two young women with bigger dreams than working at a kids’ pizza place in The Valley are recruited by a space cop to hunt down the escaped criminals, who have camouflaged themselves as eccentric Angelenos. Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker will write and executive producer with Rob Thomas, Danielle Stokdyk, Dan Etheridge; Leslie Morgenstein, and Gina Girolamo. The project is based on the Iva-Marie Palmer book of the same name.