Mediaworks unveils TV3's 2015 line-up

Antonia Prebble and David de Lautour as Rita and Ted West in Westside Story, the Outrageous Fortune prequel.

Next year's The Block NZ will feature some of the show's past stars, MediaWorks - owner of TV3 - has announced.

Currently in its third season, the DIY reality TV programme will feature "fans and favourites" next year.

The new show format was announced at the MediaWorks 2015 content launch at Auckland's Shed 10 this evening.

"In 2015, The Block format will be fans and favourites, so that means we'll see some familiar faces," TV3 presenter and event co-host Sam Hayes said this evening.

Brothers Pete and Andy Walker, who were on the show last year, were in the audience and stood up at news of the new show format.

They told the crowd and Hayes they had no information about whether they'd be back for the fourth season of the show.

TV3's plans for 2015

Meanwhile, there's plenty that's familiar about the prime line-up announced tonight by MediaWorks for TV3 and Four's 2015 schedules.

But here's a wrap-up of the new stuff the network is banking on next year...

• TV3 will screen the next season of MasterChef New Zealand, the reality culinary series which TVNZ dropped after its season earlier this year. The chef-judges in the TV3 version haven't been named as yet and previous kitchen jurist Simon Gault has said he didn't wish to continue in his screen role. TV3's 2014 cooking show, The Great Food Race, was judged a ratings failure earlier this year.

• We're getting our own version of the long-time romance- reality format in The Bachelor NZ. Group Entertainment Content Director, Andrew Szusterman says the show effectively starts on Monday with MediaWorks' radio station More FM "leading the nationwide search for our bachelorettes."

• Wellington architect Chris Moller has named as the host of the New Zealand version of house-building series Grand Designs.

• TV3 will screen the Australian mini-series Gallipoli based on Les Carlyon's best-selling book. The eight parts will follow the entire campaign. 'We thought if we're going to tell this story for television, we wanted to tell it from the beginning to the end," executive producer John Edwards told the Sydney Morning Herald. "The Carlyon book appealed because it's a complete history of Gallipoli, but also an intensely poetic, personal and humane one. And it was the poetry of it that really attracted us." Outrageous Fortune's Grant Bowler appears as Kiwi hero Kiwi war hero William Malone. "If I hadn't got the chance to do this I would have kicked myself," Bowler told the Daily Telegraph. "It's a way of being involved and saying thank you."

• Previously announced to be included in 2015's TV3 schedule is Outrageous Fortune prequel Westside Story which will star younger versions of Bowler's Wolfgang West.

• New American drama series coming to TV3 include include infidelity tale Satisfaction; Katharine Heigl as White House CIA analyst in State of Affairs; superhero reboot Heroes: Reborn; yet another Dick Wolf law franchise in Chicago P.D.; and US military conspiracy thriller Odyssey.

• A further season of reality show The GC will screen on Four with much the same cast. Meanwhile TV3 is getting new Oz reality show Gold Coast Cops.