Turner packs slate with top talent
TNT, TBS unveil fresh batch of pilots
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These projects surfaced during Turner Broadcasting's upfront presentation Wednesday morning at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. Presiding over the affair, Steve Koonin, prexy of the Turner Entertainment Networks, told a packed house of media buyers that the "momentum" of TNT, TBS and Tru TV is aimed at helping to erase "the distinction between broadcast and cable TV."
There are six TNT projects in the hopper. "Delta Blues" (working title), to be produced by Clooney and Grant Heslov's Smoke House banner and Warner Horizon TV, concerns a decorated Memphis cop who lives with his mother and happens to be an Elvis impersonator.
Surnow, co-creator of Fox's "24," is producing an untitled cop show about an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Guber's Mandalay TV is doing "Angel City," an "Adam-12"-type series that will follow the lives of six cops who man three patrol cars during typical shifts in Los Angeles.
The crime drama from Avnet is tentatively called "Morse Code," a crime drama with Donnie Wahlberg as a DEA officer in Boston.
Also in the development mix for TNT are "Tough Trade," a comedy-drama from Lionsgate TV about a family of country singers, and an untitled family drama from Rob Ulin ("Roseanne").
TBS is targeting two of its new scripts for primetime development: an untitled single-camera sitcom from William H. Macy, Steven Schachter and Sony Pictures TV and an untitled comedy from Simmons and Stan Lathan. The Zucker project for TBS, "National Banana Already in Progress," is a latenight sketch-comedy half-hour.
Michael Wright, head of programming for TNT and TBS, said TNT has ordered its first nonscripted original series, "Wedding Day," from Mark Burnett and DreamWorks TV. Wright also said that TBS is picking up "10 Items or Less" for another season, joining three other recently announced TBS renewals: "My Boys," "The Bill Engvall Show" and "Frank TV."
Another revelation from Wright is that TBS has ordered 26 more half-hours of "House of Payne," produced by Tyler Perry and distributed by Debmar-Mercury. That's on top of the 100 episodes already produced.
TNT has scaled back a little bit on its ambitious blueprint to come up with nine scripted original series spread over Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday beginning in 2010 (Daily Variety, May 15). Instead, there'll be six original series overall, two on each night airing from 9 to 11.
At Wednesday's event, Koonin and Wright brought out the casts and creators of three drama skeins ready to go later this fall or early next year: Steven Bochco's "Raising the Bar," starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Gloria Reuben and Jane Kaczmarek; Dean Devlin's "Leverage," starring Timothy Hutton; and "Truth in Advertising," starring Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh, from the production team behind TNT's hit "The Closer."
Marc Juris, head of Tru TV, also delivered an overview of the network formerly known as Court TV, but he had no new shows to announce.
