Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are
Chris Collins (SONS OF ANARCHY) has sold ANONYMOUS, a drama about “an ex-special ops soldier who discovers a global coverup that forces him to go off the grid to help those who cannot help themselves,” to TNT. (Yeppers, we’ve heard this all before, but still…remember when PERSON OF INTEREST was just two guys doing good, before they expanded it to the 8,051 person team it now is? Wouldn’t it be cool if that’s what ANONYMOUS turned out to be?)
Nina Fiore & John Herrera (ALPHAS) are writing the pilot for PLAYERS, a drama about Bad Hollywood back in the 1930s, for The CW. (Nothing really wrong about any of this except…The CW? This mean we’ll be seeing beautiful teenage Hollywood back in the days when everyone running a studio was a middle-aged white man who looked even older than that?)
Chris Collins is back, this time with MOST WANTED, a Starz series tracing the rise and fall of a ’70s bank robber. (Cuz BONNIE AND CLYDE are already taken, we guess, and setting a show only 30 years ago instead of 80 should be cheaper to shoot. Less time travel involved, after all.)
Ian Goldberg (ONCE UPON A TIME) & Jessica Borsiczky have sold GRAND AVENUE, a sort of UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS drama set in 1910 L.A. to Amazon Studios. (We admit to being just a tad dubious about anything Amazon is doing cuz…production values? But we’d love to see something set in this particular way-back work, if for no other reason than we’ve never seen that time period on TV before that we can remember.)
John Ridley (12 YEARS A SLAVE) is writing the pilot for AMERICAN CRIME, an ABC drama that examines race relations as they pertain to a sensational murder. (If it’s presented with even one-eighth the sincerity and style of 12 YEARS A SLAVE we’re in. Assuming, that is, that Oprah isn’t involved. Cuz…Oprah?)
Kelly Oxford (rejoice, newbies, becuz Kelly’s background is nothing more nor less than a popular Twitter feed) is writing a Fox comedy pilot set in a senior center. (We’re intrigued by this one simply cuz it breaks the most basic TV development rule: “Thou shalt never create a TV series about old people lest ye turn off the young audience that buys our sacred sponsors’ products.” And if conventional wisdom is correct, that seems like a really risky rule to break.)
