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TV Pilots |OT| The Season's Dead, But Development Hell is Forever

T

TheOddOne

Member
- THR: Bill Cosby Reteaming With NBC for New Family Comedy
NBC executives announced at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour that Rules of Engagement alum Mike Sikowitz and Mike O'Malley (Shameless) are writing and producing the comedy, which hails from Sony Pictures Television.

The network hopes O'Malley, who earned an Emmy nomination for his role on Fox's Glee, has a co-starring role on the Bill Cosby project, which it described as a "classic, big, extended family sitcom." Cosby — who has a talent deal with the network — will star as the family patriarch and father to three married daughters with children. Greenblatt stressed that the project is a script commitment and, if it works, could be on the air either next summer or fall 2015.
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T

TheOddOne

Member
^^ Oh, wow.

- Thomas Jane To Star In New Syfy TV Series The EXPANSE
Syfy and Alcon TV today announced that three-time Golden Globe nominee Thomas Jane (Hung, The Punisher) will star as the world-weary Detective Miller, a native of “the Asteroid Belt” between Mars and Jupiter, in The Expanse, the new 10-episode space opera based on the international best-selling book series, premiering on Syfy in 2015.

Miller portrays a detective for a corporate security force operating as the law in The Belt. Ragged, in search of something even he can’t identify, Miller remains a dedicated cop with great instincts who discovers a newfound sense of purpose when he’s put in charge of the investigation into a missing heiress.
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R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Joseph Fiennes To Star As Vengeful ‘Nostradamus’ In Carnival, Anonymous Content Drama Series

Joseph Fiennes will produce and play the titular clairvoyant in the hour-long drama.

The story follows the legendary seer as he seeks deadly vengeance for the murder of his family. A complex, brooding character with immense appetites, Nostradamus is a charismatic and self-destructive man who is plagued with dangerous and disturbing visions.

The period series is set against the backdrop of the volatile, high-stakes world of the French Royal Court where the Provençal apothecary’s pleasure-seeking impulses and passionate thirst for revenge run headlong into the treacherous epicenter of social and political life of Renaissance era Europe. The project is in early development and episode totals and broadcasters have yet to be set. But it looks likely this will be one of those that seeks out the high-end UK TV tax credit.
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C

Cornballer

Member
- Deadline: FX’s Charlie Kaufman Pilot Not Going Forward
FX has passed on How And Why, its comedy pilot, written, directed and executive produced by Charlie Kaufman. The project, which starred John Hawkes, Michael Cera, Sally Hawkins and Catherine Keener, told the story of a man who can explain how and why a nuclear reactor works, but is clueless about life. I hear the pilot came in close to an hour and swung back and forth between comedy and drama. FX currently has only one active live-action comedy pilot, the untitled Zach Galifianakis project, which was just finished and is expected to get word soon.
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W

WarrenMax007

Member
- Ed Helms, Hilary Swank & Ed Harris In Talks To Star In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s MRC Series ‘One Percent’
Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s MRC series is taking shape, with Ed Helms, Hilary Swank and Ed Harris in various stages of negotiations to topline the hour-long project. In his U.S. TV debut, the Oscar-nominated Iñárritu will direct the series, titled One Percent, which he co-created with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolas Giacobone, and Armando Bo.The four recently collaborated on the script of Iñárritu’s latest feature, black comedy Birdman Or The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance, which has been selected to open this year’s Venice Film Festival in its world premiere and as the closing-night title for the New York Film Festival.

One Percent is set against the backdrop of the organic farming community. Helms and Swank would play a husband and wife who are struggling professionally and personally to keep their business afloat, while Harris would play the family patriarch. MRC is expected to take the project out to buyers in a few weeks, likely seeking a straight-to-series order, which has been the company’s strategy. It has been able to secure two-season pickups for its Emmy-winning Fincher-Kevin Spacey drama House Of Cards at Netflix and the Seth MacFarlane comedy at Starz.
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Sounds good.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- THR: Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood to Star in HBO's 'Westworld'
The Silence of the Lambs Oscar winner has been tapped to star in the premium cable network's Abrams-produced Westworld adaptation, which has been formally picked up to pilot, The Hollywood Reporter has learned, with Wood set to co-star.

Inspired by Michael Crichton's 1973 film of the same name, the drama is billed as a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin.

Abrams will executive produce alongside veteran producer Jerry Weintraub and Bad Robot's Bryan Burk. Person of Interest's Jonathan Nolan co-wrote, executive produced and directed the pilot. Lisa Joy co-wrote the pilot and exec produces. Kathy Lingg will co-EP and Athena Wickham is a producer on the Warner Bros. Television drama. David Coatsworth is set as a co-EP and line producer, with Susie Ekins set as a co-producer. Westworld hails from Abrams' Bad Robot Productions, Jerry Weintraub Productions and Kilter Films.

Hopkins is set to play Dr. Robert Ford, the brilliant, taciturn and complicated creative director, chief programmer and chairman of the board of Westworld, who has an uncompromising creative vision for the park — and unorthodox methods of achieving it. Wood will portray Dolores Abernathy, the quintessential farm girl of the frontier West — who is about to discover that her entire idyllic existence is an elaborately constructed lie.

For Hopkins, who also earned Oscar nominations for Amistad, Nixon and The Remains of the Day, Westworld would mark his first TV series regular role. He's repped by UTA, manager Rick Nicita and Stone Meyer.

Wood, meanwhile, will return to HBO after her Emmy-nominated supporting role in miniseries Mildred Pierce and recurring role on vampire drama True Blood. She's repped by CAA and Ziffren Brittenham.

Hopkins becomes the latest big-screen star to head to TV, joining the likes of Billy Bob Thornton (FX's Fargo), Halle Berry (CBS' Extant) and True Detective duo Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, among others.

The drama, which received a pilot production commitment last August, serves as the latest example of a premium cable network picking up a project from an outside studio. Westworld marks HBO's second series from Warner Bros. Television, joining Damon Lindelof's adaptation of Tom Perotta's best-seller The Leftovers. The cabler also has Ryan Murphy's sexuality drama pilot Open, from 20th Century Fox Television, in contention.
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R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Amazon Studios Adds Drama ‘The Man In The High Castle’, Comedy ‘Just Add Magic’ To Pilot Slate

Based on Philip K. Dick’s Hugo Award-winning novel, The Man In the High Castle hails from The X-Files alum Frank Spotnitz and Scott Free.

Written by Spotnitz and to be directed by David Semel (Legends), the project set in 1962 explores an alternative reality in which Nazi Germany and Japan won World War II and occupy the United States, with the East Coast controlled by the Nazis and the West Coast owned by Japan, and a chunk of the Midwest still up for grabs. Fascism rules and the few surviving Jews hide under assumed names. But an aging Hitler has one foot in the grave, and the Japanese are preparing for an imminent Nazi stab in the back. The U.S. Resistance is scattered, scared, or crushed. The project originally was set up as a four-hour miniseries at Syfy last year.
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Written by Joanna Lewis, Joanna Songco and Nancy Cohen and to be directed by Joe Nussbaum (Sydney White), Just Add Magic centers on three 12-year-old girls and best friends, whose lives change when one of them, whose passion is baking, discovers in her attic a strange old recipe book, with recipes for baked goods that also have powerful spells.
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C

Cornballer

Member
- The Wrap: ‘Walking Dead’ Creator Robert Kirkman's Cinemax Pilot, ‘Outcast,’ in Pre-Production
“Walking Dead” creator Robert Kirkman says his new Cinemax pilot, “Outcast,” has moved into pre-production.

Kirkman, an executive producer of AMC's “Walking Dead,” based on his comics, provided the update at San Diego Comic-Con and on Twitter Friday. The pilot, the first Kirkman has written, follows a young man who has been plagued by possession since he was a child and now seeks answers that may end life as we know it.

“Demons are the new zombies,” Kirkman tweeted. “#Outcast pilot into pre-production @Cinemax.”

He also thanked partners Fox International Channels, and his Skybound imprint at Image Comics. The first issue of the “Outcast” comic has exceeded peak “Walking Dead” sales, and the second issue will debut at Comic-Con Saturday. Kirkman will serve as executive producer of “Outcast” alongside David Alpert of Circle of Confusion, Sue Naegle, Chris Black, and Sharon Tal Yguado of FIC.
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C

Cornballer

Member
- AMC Greenlights 'White City'
AMC today announced a pilot greenlight for “White City,” a gripping geopolitical drama focused on Western diplomats and journalists living in Afghanistan.

“White City” is an adventure story set in the somewhat surreal ex-pat world of near-present Afghanistan, one of the most discussed and least understood places on earth. The show focuses on Jon Liston, a war junkie who has spent the better part of the last decade in Kabul with a front-row seat to the carnage. In the pilot, against the advice of everyone from American embassy staffers to tweeting tribal leaders to the French journalist he’s in a relationship with, Jon tragically overreaches in an attempt to talk with insurgent leaders. In the series, Jon must find a new role in Kabul as he attempts to address his guilt, frustration and doubts about whether there is good left for him or any Westerner to do in Afghanistan.

The project comes from co-writers and co-executive producers Nick McDonell, a novelist (Twelve, An Expensive Education) and journalist who has covered Iraq and Afghanistan for TIME, and John Dempsey, former long-time resident of Kabul and senior advisor on Afghanistan to the late US diplomat, Richard C. Holbrooke. Executive producers are Chris Mundy, a long-time journalist for Rolling Stone and showrunner on “Criminal Minds” and “Low Winter Sun,” and Tom Freston, the former CEO of Viacom and a former resident of Afghanistan. Currently an advisor to VICE and MOBY Group, an Afghan media corporation. “White City” is an AMC Studios production.

“This is a story born from a creative team in Chris, John, Nick and Tom that has both an incredibly deep understanding of one of the most misunderstood regions of the world, and a fantastic sense of how to tell a compelling story about the lives of people who are drawn to the world’s hot spots,” saidJoel Stillerman, AMC’s executive vice president of original programming, production and digital content. “It’s not a war story, it’s a character story that will tackle some of the most complicated issues of our time.”
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R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Rafa=FedKilla said:
I don't know what else was going on in their Bake off this year, but that sounds like croutons....
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Raiders
Writer/Executive Producer: Evan Wright
Executive Producers: David Zucker, Ridley Scott
WWII drama about a rogue U.S. Navy commander who leads an unconventional warfare unit into the heart of Africa on a mission that will bend the arc of history

Ashland
Writers/Executive Producers: Allison Anders (Gas, Food, Lodging; Mi Vida Loca) and Terry Graham
Co-Executive Producer: Shana Eddy
Set in 1950 in Ashland, a tiny mining town in Kentucky, the Evans family has just relocated from California and the matriarch, Del, must hide her family’s secrets and find a way to support her three children at the height of the Red Scare.

White City
Executive Producer: Tom Freston
Writers/Co-Executive Producers: Nick McDonell, John Dempsey
The drama series follows western diplomats and journalists living in Afghanistan.

Untitled Dahvi Waller Project
Writer/Executive Producer: Dahvi Waller
Set against the New York automobile industry of the 1920s, two brothers struggle to keep their family-run company afloat with a class-hopping Ziegfeld girl and the daughter of an English competitor blurring the line between love and business.

The Sparrow
Writer/Executive Producer: Michael Perry
Based on Mary Doria Russell’s acclaimed science fiction epic, “The Sparrow” tells the story of a Jesuit-led mission to make first contact with an alien race.
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Of course, it's all in the execution, but White City was by far the least interesting sounding of the bunch.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- Deadline: USA Gives Pilot Order To Alien Drama From Carlton Cuse, Legendary TV & UCP
Carlton Cuse is officially the hardest-working drama showrunner in town with three series and two pilots on his plate. USA Network has handed a pilot green light to Colony (working title), from Lost alum Cuse and Hercules co-writer Ryan Condal. The project hails from Legendary Television, marking the first scripted pilot for the company, and Universal Cable Prods.

Written and executive produced by Cuse and Condal, Colony was featured on USA’s development slate in May. It is described as a naturalistic drama set in the near future in Los Angeles, which exists in a state of occupation by a force of alien intruders. Some collaborate with the authorities and benefit from the new order, while others rebel and suffer the consequences. The project centers on a family torn by opposing forces and making difficult choices as they balance staying together with surviving the struggle of the human race.

“Colony is a gripping story that brilliantly weaves together an intense family drama in an authentic, yet unknown, world,” said USA President Chris McCumber. USA had been looking to return to the alien genre space, which the network tackled with the 2007 sci-fi series The 4400. Its most previous batch of pilots included World War II alien drama Horizon, which didn’t go to series.

Colony marks the second collaboration between Cuse and Condal, who previously executive produced NBC’s comic book-based drama pilot The Sixth Gun, penned by Condal. Meanwhile, Condal has an existing relationship with Legendary on the feature side as co-writer of Paradise Lost. With the pickup of Colony, Cuse has three series and two pilots at cable and digital outlets: series Bates Motel and the upcoming The Returned at A&E as well as The Strain at FX and pilots Colony and Civil War drama Point Of Honor at Amazon. At USA, Colony joins drama pilots Stanistan and Mr. Robot.
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R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Cornballer said:
- Deadline: USA Gives Pilot Order To Alien Drama From Carlton Cuse, Legendary TV & UCP

It is described as a naturalistic drama set in the near future in Los Angeles, which exists in a state of occupation by a force of alien intruders. Some collaborate with the authorities and benefit from the new order, while others rebel and suffer the consequences. The project centers on a family torn by opposing forces and making difficult choices as they balance staying together with surviving the struggle of the human race.
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So basically it's "V".
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- Deadline: HBO Greenlights David Simon Miniseries Starring Oscar Isaac & Catherine Keener
After spending the last couple of months locking in a director and lead cast, HBO has officially greenlighted for production Show Me A Hero, a six-hour miniseries from The Wire co-creator David Simon. Inside Llewyn Davis leading man Oscar Isaac is set to star and Catherine Keener to co-star in the mini, which will be directed by Paul Haggis (Crash).

Penned by Simon and Baltimore Sun journalist/The Wire writer William F. Zorzi, Show Me A Hero is based on the nonfiction book by Lisa Belkin. It tells the story of Nick Wasicsko (Isaac), the youngest big-city mayor in the nation who finds himself thrust into the center of a racial controversy when a federal court orders him to build a small number of low-income housing units in the white neighborhoods of his town, Yonkers, N.Y.. His attempt to do so tears the city apart, paralyzes the municipalshowmeahero government and, ultimately, destroys his political future. Keener, repped by Gersh, plays Mary Dorman, an East Yonkers homeowner who comes to a remarkable realization during the battle over where to build low-income housing.

Simon, Zorzi and Haggis executive produce with Nina Noble and Gail Mutrux. This marks Simon’s third miniseries for HBO following 2000′s The Corner, which won an Emmy for Best Miniseries, and Generation Kill, which was nominated in the category. He also co-created HBO’s New Orleans drama Treme, whose five-episode final season is up for Best Miniseries Emmy this year. Isaac, repped by UTA and Inspire Entertainment, has been filming Star Wars: Episode VII.
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T

TheOddOne

Member
RatskyWatsky said:
Honestly, the crazy "OMG BEST SHOW EVARRR" cult that surrounds the show has been a major turn off to me.
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Totally understandable. Not all of the seasons were that compelling, especially the second season (weird tonal shift, you will notice it when you see it). For me, the well written and realized characters were the main draw.
 
R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
TheOddOne said:
Totally understandable. Not all of the seasons were that compelling, especially the second season (weird tonal shift, you will notice it when you see it). For me, the well written and realized characters were the main draw.
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I still intend to watch it someday, but probably only after I've seen everything else on HBO.

Cornballer said:
Kinda like how you haven't watched last Sunday's episode of Masters of Sex yet? ;)
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hehe I was going to watch it last night but I decided to read Vol. 20 of The Walking Dead instead!
 
S

Steelyuhas

Member
HBO's Westworld casts 6 more actors
TV Line said:
Boardwalk Empire‘s Jeffrey Wright, Lost‘s Rodrigo Santoro and Raising Hope‘s Shannon Woodward have joined HBO’s sci-fi drama pilot from exec producers J.J. Abrams, Jerry Weintraub and Bryan Burk and writers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy.

Additionally, Ingrid Bolso Berdal (Hercules), Angela Sarafyan (The Good Guys) and Simon Quarterman (The Devil Inside) have been added to the ensemble.

As previously reported, Anthony Hopkins stars as Dr. Robert Ford, the park’s head honcho who has “unorthodox methods” of bringing his visions to life. Evan Rachel Wood co-stars as Dolores Abernathy, a sweet, Midwestern farm girl who is in for a very rude awakening.
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Additional info about the characters of the six new cast members via the link.


The hype train is real
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
The big screen adaptation of John Scalzi's Old Man's War is moving to Syfy.

Syfy is continuing to ramp up its sci-fi fare.

The NBCUniversal-owned cable network has put into development Ghost Brigades, a drama based on John Scalzi's Hugo-nominated Old Man's War universe book series, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The NeverEnding Story's Wolfgang Petersen will oversee development on the project alongside Scott Stuber (Safe House), with Jake Thornton and Ben Lustig (Winter's Knight) on board to pen the first script. The drama hails from Universal Cable Productions, Petersen's Radiant Productions and Stuber's Bluegrass Films.

Ghost Brigades follows John Perry, who at 75 enlists in the Colonial Defense Force to fight a centuries-long war for man's expansion into the cosmos. Technology allows experiences and consciousness to be transplanted into younger bodies that are outfitted to endure the harsher rigors of war in space. However, soon after John arrives, he finds himself involved with a mysterious woman, and at the same time, at the center of an unraveling conspiracy involving an elite fighting force known as the Ghost Brigades.

Military sci-fi book Old Man's War was first published in 2005 and was nominated for the Hugo Award for best novel in 2006. Paramount Pictures optioned the property with Petersen attached to direct, David Self (Road to Perdition) attached to adapt Scalzi's book and Stuber on board to produce in 2011 but nothing ever came of it.
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The books are decent fun. I'm not entirely sure I foresee Syfy being able to do this justice, if only from a budgetary standpoint. The war sequences are big portions of the story and would be along the lines of Starship Troopers or Halo stuff.
 
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