VIDEO: ROOTS Cast Talks Reimagining Classic Mini-Series for Next Generation

Nearly 40 years after its original airing, the record-breaking miniseries ROOTS is being reimagined by the History Channel. Below, the new cast of the classic saga stopped by GOOD MORNING AMERICA to talk about the project.

The classic miniseries ROOTS was a television phenomenon that had an indelible effect on American culture. A+E Networks and The Wolper Organization - the company that produced the original - are making a version of Alex Haley's American family origin story based around the life of Kunta Kinte. Lawrence Konner (Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, Mona Lisa Smile, Planet of the Apes), Mark Rosenthal (Mona Lisa Smile, Planet of the Apes), Alison McDonald (Alpha House, Nurse Jackie) and Charles Murray (Sons Of Anarchy, Luke Cage) are writing. ROOTS will be an original, contemporary production, incorporating more material from Haley's novel, ROOTS: The Saga of an American Family, as well as carefully researched new scholarship of the time.

ROOTS is a historical portrait of American slavery recounting THE JOURNEY of one family's will to survive, endure and ultimately carry on their legacy despite enormous hardship and inhumanity. Spanning multiple generations, the lineage begins with young Kunta Kinte who is captured in his homeland in The Gambia and transported in brutal conditions to colonial America where he's sold into slavery. Throughout the series, THE FAMILY continues to face adversity while bearing witness and contributing to notable events in U.S. history - including the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, slave uprisings and eventual emancipation. The story of Kunta Kinte and the women and men who came after him echoes through the history of millions of Americans of African descent, and reveals powerful truths about the universal resilience of the human spirit.

Image courtesy of ABC