ROOTS - THE REMAKE OF AN AMERICAN CLASSIC

On Memorial Day this year witness the remake of the American classic "Roots". The landmark television series was and is based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family. It originally aired in 1977 on ABC to huge audiences and captivated a nation and some even state divided it. It is one of the most watched and successful tv mini series of all-time and History hopes history will repeat itself in this day and age of DVR and streaming.

Roots was a critically acclaimed smash hit with 37 Emmy Award nominations and won nine (one of the winners being legendary Quincy Jones for the music). It won also a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award that helped catapult some of the actors and actresses into fame such as Levar Burton (who played young Kunte Kinte) and Louis Gossett Jr(who played Fiddler). It also turned John Amos (who played James Evans on classic "Good Times" as the older Kunte Kinte) into an even bigger star. The Nielsen ratings for the finale (over 100 Million) still holds a record as the third highest rated episode for any type of television series, and the second most watched overall series finale in U.S. television history.

ALSO CHECK OUT ARTICLE: HISTORY CHANNEL TO REMAKE ROOTS

The story of Roots spans decades, but the origin is In The Gambia, West Africa, in 1750 when Kunta Kinte is born to Omoro Kinte, a Mandinka warrior, and his wife, Binta. As was the custom in the region when Kunte reaches the age of 15, he and a group of other adolescent boys take part in tribal manhood training, ending with a ceremony, after which they become recognized as men and Mandinka warriors. While trying to carry out a task to catch a bird and take it home unharmed, Kunta sees white men carrying firearms, along with their black collaborators.

Later, while fetching wood outside his village to make a drum for his younger brother, Kunta is captured by black collaborators under the direction of white men. He is then sold to a slave trader and placed aboard a ship under the command of Capt. Thomas Davies for a three-month journey to Colonial America. During the voyage a group of rebels among the human cargo try but fail to stage a mutiny and to take over the ship.

The ship eventually arrives in Annapolis, Maryland in 1767, where the captured Africans are sold at auction as slaves.

Will the modern era of film making supercede the original that rocked a nation back in the 1970's? A time when African Americans were becoming very conscious of their history that was stolen from them? It helped elevate a conscious across all the States where young men and women started wearing the Afro hairstyle. Pretty sure, a young Barack Obama who watched the film may have been inspired by to to become years later the first Black President of the United States of America. In these times of police brutality and misconduct against African Americans in America, will this movie hit at the core of the longest running issue in the country's storied history?

Levar Burton who played Kunte Kinte back in the 1970's belives the time has come to have an updated version of the series. He spoke with The Telegraph recently and even though he had some second thoughts about having this classic remade he has come around on the project which he is executive producer. He states:

"It was time — almost 40 years had passed. It made sense. If we want to keep these stories alive in the cultural consciousness, we have to reinvent them and retell them," he told AP. The political climate in the US, he said, "has triggered a fear, an underlying sense of disquiet that was there all along."

The all-star cast includes Laurence Fishburne, Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, with newcomer Malachi Kirby, a Londoner, as a young Kinte.

ALSO CHECK OUT ARTICLE: T.I. TO BE CAST IN ROOTS REMAKE

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