Tag: TVWriter.Com

Another Dutch Drama Comes to U.S. TV

It’s all starting to feel so familiar. Let’s just pretend we gave our obligatory (yet heartfelt) rant about “Why aren’t you asshats buying new material instead of going for old stuff from, well, anywhere but an excited, fervid, currently functioning human brain?” and move on:

David Zabel To Adapt Dutch Drama For ABC – by Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: With Red Widowlanding on ABC’s schedule for next season, the network has put in development another drama project based on a Dutch format. Former ER showrunnerDavid Zabel is set to write and executive produce Betrayal, a serialized drama based on the 2011 Dutch series Overspel, produced by and runs on Netherlands’ public broadcaster Vara. It centers on an unhappily married woman who begins a torrid affair with the lawyer for a powerful family. When he turns out to be the legal counsel for a murder suspect who is being prosecuted by her husband, the affair and the case begin a spiraling series of betrayals with cataclysmic results for everyone involved.

CYRANO DE BERGERAC Nosing His Way into Our Hearts via NBC

Because it’s been way too long since another bunch of tools murderized this classic (and by being a classic it’s in the public domain and free, free, free for BigMedia to plunder!):

Contemporary Cyrano De Bergerac-Themed Political Romantic Comedy Lands At NBC – by Nellie Andreeva

NBC has bought an hourlong romantic comedy from writer Michael Oates Palmer, Prospect Park TV and Universal TV. Tentatively titled Cyrano, the contemporary project, which has received a script commitment with penalty, recasts Edmond Rostand’s classic tale of the eloquent but looks-challenged Cyrano de Bergerac against the high-stakes world of campaign politics and government. It centers on a less-than-attractive but genius campaign strategist who returns to save the floundering gubernatorial campaign of the handsome but inarticulate Mayor whose career he helped launch. With the candidate being the photogenic, charismatic mouthpiece for the strategist’s ideas and rhetoric, the sky’s the limit — until both men fall for the same woman, a journalist covering the campaign. Palmer, who is writing the project as part of an overall deal with Universal TV he signed in April, will executive produce Cyrano with Prospect Park’s Jeff Kwatinetz and Josh Barry. read article

BEVERLY HILLS COP Series By…Shawn Ryan?

Works for us:

    

Eddie Murphy and Shawn Ryan Are Teaming Up to Make a Beverly Hills Cop TV Show – by Josef Adalian read article

“Extreme Rewriting” isn’t a Sport – Yet. Ouch!

“Hurts so good”:

One Simple and Incredibly Painful Way to Fix Your Novel Draft – by Charlie Jane Anders read article

Teaming with the Smiths Pays Off

That’s Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, and the guy it’s paying off for is J. Michael Straczynski of BABYLON 5 fame.

J. Michael Straczynski ‘cuz we’ve all seen plenty of Will and Jada

What we hear is that ABC has put a Straczynski-Smith-Smith series in development with a script-to-series commitment, which means that based on a pilot script alone ABC either will order/put into production 13 episodes of the series…or it won’t.

But, hey, at least there’s no pilot to diddle around with. read article