pilots-related stories
Posted Aug 9th 2009 1:02PM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Celebrities, Reality-Free
Louis C.K. just shot a new comedy pilot for FX. He plays a stand-up comic dealing with divorce and fatherhood. It's hard to imagine where they come up with this stuff when you consider that C.K. is a stand-up comic and a divorced father.
And, just to push the boundaries of creativity one level higher, FX is calling it
Louis. (Strangely enough, rumor has it there's another pilot already called
C.K. about an animated chicken working as a trauma nurse at a downtown hospital in a post apocalyptic future.)
One of the top stand-up comics working today and a former writer for Conan O'Brien and Dana Carvey, C.K. has yet to see his own TV projects take off. His 2006 HBO show
Lucky Louie never got on the pop culture radar.
Continue reading Louis C.K. shoots new comedy pilot for FX
Posted Aug 6th 2009 8:09AM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, Heroes, Reality-Free
Alphas -- a science fiction/action pilot that certainly has nothing to do with
Heroes on NBC -- just got picked up by Syfy. The network would also like to assure you that their new show has nothing to do with
Heroes.
The 90-minute adventure has been kicking around Hollywood for a couple years now.
Alphas tells the story of "a team of ordinary citizens who possess hyperdeveloped neurological abilities."
That sounds nothing like
Heroes at all -- which is fortunate because Syfy is a member of the NBC/Universal family of networks.
Continue reading Syfy comes off as heroes for picking up Alphas
Posted May 8th 2009 3:02PM by Mike Moody
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, Industry, Programming, Battlestar Galactica, Reality-Free
This week, we learned that
Fox will air the pilot for
Battlestar Galactica producer Ron Moore's new show,
Virtuality, on July 4. I was excited about this news at first. I love
BSG and almost everything else Ron Moore has ever produced/written (
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,
Roswell). But now I'm worried.
Fox reportedly
ordered a bunch of changes to the show last December, hoping to make it more of a mainstream drama. Now, some folks, like our buddies at
Airlock Alpha, seemed convinced that airing the pilot on July 4 is a sign that Fox has already given up on
Virtuality.
Continue reading Is Ron Moore's Virtuality dead in the water?
Posted May 6th 2009 8:00PM by Mike Moody
Filed under: Celebrities, Casting, Reality-Free
It's about time Peter Dinklage returned to TV.
The actor has been
tapped to play a key role in HBO's fantasy pilot
Game of Thrones. The pilot is based on George R.R. Martin's "Songs of Fire and Ice" novels and will take place in a violent fantasy kingdom. Dinklage will play the brother of the kingdom's queen, who is shunned because of his size.
Game of Thrones will reunite Dinklage with
The Station Agent director Tom McCarthy, who is directing the pilot. McCarthy seems like an odd choice to direct a fantasy pilot. The actor-turned-director has only helmed two films,
Agent and
The Visitor, both low budget character dramas. Hopefully, this means
Game of Thrones will deliver good character drama, as well as cool fantasy elements.
Continue reading Peter Dinklage starring in HBO fantasy pilot
Posted Apr 23rd 2009 7:01PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Programming, Reality-Free
The networks are going to unleash their new fall schedules in a few weeks. Which new shows are in the running? Well, Juliana Margulies is going to be an attorney (again), Kelsey Grammer is going to be a Wall Street CEO who gets canned (you knew you were going to see at least one show with that premise this fall), Lauren Graham is going to be a self-help guru, Chevy Chase and
The Soup's Joel McHale are going to be community college students, and Thomas Jane is going to be ... well,
Hung.
AOL has a list of the 30 shows that have the best shot at being on our TV screens when the fall rolls around. Not all of the shows will make it, of course. Some we'll never see at all, unless the pilot episode is leaked online. I'm still ticked that
ABC didn't pick up Marlowe (with
Life on Mars star Jason O'Mara) a couple of season ago. The gallery is after the jump.
Continue reading Which of these new shows are you most looking forward to?
Posted Feb 6th 2009 6:06PM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Programming, OpEd, Reality-Free
I was sitting down to watch TV last night, scanning through my choices on DVR:
Lie to Me,
Eleventh Hour,
Life,
Life on Mars.... I turned to my husband and said, "I think I'm sick of procedurals."
So I thought about what other shows we watch:
Grey's Anatomy,
House,
Eli Stone,
Damages... wait a minute, cops and doctors and lawyers... oh my! The only shining light, besides my TV on DVD, in our lineup is
Leverage, so thanks again TNT for something different.
You can imagine, then, how I connected with
James Hibbard's article today about the new fall TV pilots, and how they are all pretty much cop, lawyer or doctor shows. Yawn... I'm tired of these, so I scanned his list to find something unique. Did I?
Continue reading Cops, doctors, and lawyers ... oh my!
Posted Feb 3rd 2009 6:03PM by Mike Moody
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Industry, Reality-Free
Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the producing team behind
My So-Called Life,
thirtysomething and
Quarterlife, are
prepping a new drama pilot for CBS. The project, called
A Marriage, will be an examination of a working modern-day marriage.
I'm looking forward to this.
Quarterlife had its problems, but Herskovitz and Zwick are masters of nuanced character-centric drama. I was a teenager in the '90s; so believe me when I say that they helped paint an absorbing and realistic portrait of adolescence with
My So-Called Life. For me, that show really captured the raw emotion, pointless anxiety and simple joy of being an American teenager at that time. (It also encouraged me to buy my first albums by The Lemonheads and Juliana Hatfield. Thanks TV!)
Continue reading Thirtysomething creators start A Marriage with CBS
Posted Jan 20th 2009 10:02AM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: Industry, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
Fox has inked a deal
for a bunch of new pilots for next season. They include such titles as
The Station,
Walorsky,
Two Dollar Beer,
Sons of Tucson and
Human Target.
Among them,
Human Target is of the most interest to me. It's an adaptation from a DC Comics character. He's a bodyguard named Christopher Chance that assumes the identity of the person he is supposed to protect. Properly done, this could become a companion show or successor to
24 (particularly since
Prison Break is ending).
This isn't even the first television adaption for
The Human Target, as Rick Springfield starred in a
brief series about the same character in 1990. However, things were different then. The environment is better for such a program now, assuming they take it seriously and don't make it too cartoon-like (although I could argue that
24 is cartoon-like in its presentation).
So which of the new Fox pilots do you find interesting?
Posted Sep 30th 2008 5:04PM by Kelly Woo
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Industry, The Closer, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
After the success of
The Closer, you can't blame TNT for going with a proven formula.
The cable network is close to
greenlighting two police drama pilots, a project from Jerry Bruckheimer about young undercover officers and
Bunker Hill starring Donnie Wahlberg (which actually already received an a pilot order).
TNT's certainly been a busy little bee, stacking up
new series left and right. Besides these two pilots, they've got
Time Heals, starring Jada Pinkett Smith as a hospital nursing director;
Night and Day, with William Fichtner playing an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; and
Men of a Certain Age, a dramedy featuring Ray Romano, Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher.
Continue reading TNT making more cop dramas
Posted Aug 24th 2008 12:45PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Programming, Reality-Free
Once upon a time, a new science fiction drama called
Star Trek premiered with an episode called "The Man Trap" rather than the pilot (actually the second pilot, the one that introduced Captain Kirk) on September 8, 1966. The pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," wasn't shown till the third week on the air.
NBC's decision to switch the episodes didn't help amp up
Star Trek's ratings in that first season, but network wisdom at the time was that "Man Trap" was a better starting point than "Where No Man Has Gone Before."
Cut to now.
Two current properties, CBS's Eleventh Hour and Fox's Do Not Disturb, have switched out their pilot episodes for another episode as the season's premieres.
You might recall that Brett wrote a month ago about this happening with
Joss Whedon's Dollhouse too.
On September 10, the Fox comedy
Do Not Disturb will present "Work Sex," about the workers at The Inn fooling around on the job, in lieu of the pilot, which will air sometime in the future. This may be a sign of trouble.
Continue reading CBS and Fox play pilot switcheroo
Posted Mar 28th 2008 9:23AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Industry, Pickups and Renewals
There was
more pilot news percolating out of ABC yesterday, including three dramas and a sitcom. On the funny side, writer/producers Jennifer Konner and Alexandra Rushfield are working on
Bad Mother's Handbook. It follows the life of a busy, thirtysomething mom dealing with the needs/wants/desires of her teenaged daughter and 48-year old mother. Hmm, sounds like a close knit family! You think they're all under one roof? The sitcom will be a single-camera affair, half-hour laugh fest (or so we hope). I vote for Jamie Lee Curtis as the 48-year old mom. She can still play 48; yes, she can. She looks great on those yogurt commercials!
Continue reading ABC orders four more pilots
Posted Mar 12th 2008 11:01AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Industry, Pickups and Renewals, Casting, Pushing Daisies, Private Practice, Dirty Sexy Money, WGA Strike
Autumn may not look the same way it usually does on ABC in 2008. The network is seriously considering opening the new season sans new drama series. There will still be returning shows, including the dramas from 2007 which have been deemed successes by the ABC brass, including
Pushing Daisies, Private Practice and
Dirty Sexy Money -- but no new pilots.
Continue reading Untraditional autumn set for ABC
Posted Sep 7th 2007 6:55PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, The Daily Show, NYTVF
The third annual New York Television Festival is now taking place in the Big Apple. As we did last year, we will review each of the pilots in competition there. This is the fourth set of those reviews.When I spoke to Eben Russell, the NYTVF's main spokesperson, about how there seemed to be a lot of comedies this year, he mentioned that they wanted to judge the pilots being sent into the festival on their own merits, instead of shoehorning them into categories, like they did the first two years. "We adopted an approach taking the most outstanding pilots, regarding of genre. We have a large amount of comedies as compared to other genres," is what he told me in an e-mail prior to the festival.
The implication is that the other categories didn't have enough quality entries to justify their own categories. Judging by the uneven quality of the following pilots, it makes me wonder what the pilots that were rejected look like (you can view the pilots
at MSN).
Continue reading NYTVF: Pilot reviews, part four of six
Posted Sep 3rd 2007 1:01PM by Adam Finley
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Industry
Leverage has been added to TNT's list of drama pilots, only one or two of which will be chosen for next summer's schedule to air alongside popular series The Closer and Saving Grace. The other dramas include an untitled legal drama from Stephen Bochco starring Jane Kaczmarek and Mark-Paul Gosselaar, the William H. Macy dramedy Family Man, and Truth in Advertising, a drama about an ad agency.
Continue reading TNT and ABC order new drama pilots
Posted Aug 27th 2007 2:01PM by Adam Finley
Filed under: Industry, Celebrities, Casting
Actors Donal Logue and Eliza Dushku, along with writer/producer David Hemingson, recently signed on for new network projects.
Logue stars in FOX's Barry Sonnefeld-directed comedy pilot, Hackett, as a "bad-boy literary luminary" who goes from teaching at Yale to teaching at a public school in Ohio. The pilot also stars Rachel Boston (American Dreams) and Morgan Murphy. Logue was last seen on ABC's short-lived The Knights of Prosperity. Sonnefeld will work on Hackett, as well as direct episodes of Pushing Daisies, a new series for ABC premiering Wednesdays this fall.
Continue reading Dushku, Logue and Hemingson involved in new network projects
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