Nat Geo preps reboot of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

National Geographic Channels International will launch a modernised version of iconic space series Cosmos across its 170 channels in 2014.

The series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, will air on Fox and Nat Geo in the US next spring. Both are owned by News Corp.

The show will be a reboot of the classic thirteen-part space and science series from the late 1970s, which was written by Sagan, Steven Soter and Ann Druyan and the latter two will work on the new series.

Family Guy creator Seth Macfarlane is on board as an executive producer.

Sagan, who died in 1996, will be replaced as host by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

“There’s never been a more important time for Cosmos to re-emerge than right now. I want to make this so entertaining, and so flashy, and so exciting that people who have no interest in science will watch just because it’s a spectacle,” said Macfarlane.