Tag Archives: John Landgraf

CBS boldly goes for Star Trek series

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The original Star Trek series
The original Star Trek series

It’s 50 years since sci-fi adventure series Star Trek launched as a TV series. Since then it has given birth to seven TV series and 12 films – and that’s not the end of its intergalactic journey.

This summer there will be a new movie, Star Trek Beyond. And then in 2017 comes a new TV series, to be aired on CBS.

The CBS show is being co-created and produced by Bryan Fuller, who is also the showrunner. Fuller, whose major credits to date include Hannibal, revealed this week that he has invited Nicholas Meyer onto the writing team of the show.

Meyer is widely acknowledged to have re-energised the franchise with his work on the 1982 movie The Wrath of Khan and his subsequent involvement in the fourth and sixth films.

Fuller said: “Nicholas Meyer chased Kirk and Khan around the Mutara Nebula and around Genesis’ flames, he saved the whales with the Enterprise and waged war and peace between Klingons and the Federation. We are thrilled to announce that one of Star Trek’s greatest storytellers will be boldly returning as Nicholas Meyer beams aboard the new Star Trek writing staff.”

It’s too early to know how CBS plans to evolve the show (a female captain on the USS Enterprise, maybe?), but you can guarantee it will be a focal point in terms of international distribution during the coming year.

The last TV iteration of the franchise, Enterprise, aired on The UPN Network (a precursor to The CW) in the US from 2001 to 2005. Internationally, it was mainly restricted to science-fiction-themed channels. But the new Star Trek series feels like it has potential to have a greater impact on the global market.

The most likely outcome is that it will end up on a mix of pay TV and mainstream TV channels (though it is the kind of show that might just sneak into weekend teatime slots on some of the world’s bigger free TV broadcasters). But there are a couple of other possibilities.

American Crime Story
David Schwimmer and John Travolta in American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson

One is that CBS might use the show to try to brand its international networks, in the way AMC is now doing with AMC Global and Fear The Walking Dead. Another is that CBS might get an irresistible offer from Netflix or Amazon, both of which have aired the Star Trek back catalogue on their platforms.

Whatever the outcome, expect to see a lot of Star Trek activity at Comic-Con International in San Diego in July.

Meanwhile, four episodes in and American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson has seen its audience slide from 5.1 million to 2.99 million on FX. That’s still very good, however, and has already led to a renewal. For anyone wondering what the subject of the next series might be, FX CEO John Landgraf has been telling the US media it will focus on 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and the devastating impact it had on the people of New Orleans.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Landgraf said next season won’t focus on a singular crime “but there were a series of pretty serious crimes that took place in and around Katrina. Part of what Ryan [Murphy], Nina [Jacobson] and Brad [Simpson] want do with this franchise is use these compelling and entertaining stories to delve into what lies beneath the surface of crime and of our society.

“Katrina is really an interesting decision in that regard. It’s a big, epic story. On one level, it’s a disaster story with all the sort of human scale and tragedy and interest that any story might have, but then inside it there are all these other fascinating sub-stories. Why were the levees flawed? How did they get that way? Why were there hospitals where life-support systems were being turned off? How did a bunch of people end up inside the Superdome, essentially living in squalid conditions?”

One point not raised in this comment is that Katrina brings with it the same background of racial tensions and media frenzy that swirled around the OJ case. Initially, African Americans were accused of committing a series of criminal acts under cover of the storm, but subsequent investigation found that this was the kind of hysterical misinformed rumour that often accompanies such tragic events. Instead, the real story of Katrina was the number of black deaths that took place at the hands of white gun-toting vigilantes. So it will be interesting to see how FX steers through this subject.

Death in Paradise has sold to well over 200 countries
Death in Paradise, which has sold to well over 200 countries, is getting a sixth season

Spike Lee previously looked at Katrina for HBO in the documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Released in 2006, this was a superb, award-winning piece of work but one that focused primarily on personal testimony related to the storm. It came out before stories about the vigilante killings had been properly investigated and accepted as genuine.

Other noteworthy stories this week include the news that multilingual video-streaming site Viki is partnering with The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman on a new scripted series. Five Year is an original story about a family living under the threat of a deadly meteor hurtling toward Earth.

In an interesting twist, the 16-part show is being produced as a Korean drama by Kirkman’s US-based company Skybound Entertainment.

“This has been a story I have wanted to tell for quite some time, but David [Alpert, production partner and Skybound president/co-founder] and I wanted to make sure it found a proper home where it could grow and breathe creatively. Looking at what Viki has done in not only the dramatic series space, but transforming the way viewers consume and translate media, we knew immediately Five Year had found its home.”

US-Asia TV collaborations are still rare but Viki CEO Tammy Nam believes this is changing: “We’re thrilled to be working with the creators of one of the most popular TV series of all time. The fact that David and Robert wanted to make Five Year as a K-drama is a testament to the popularity and quality of Asian programming. In many ways, Viki and Skybound represent the future of global entertainment, particularly with Hollywood-Asia collaborations and VoD platforms like Viki leading distribution and fan-building.”

In Europe, the biggest greenlight news of the week has been the BBC’s decision to give Red Planet Pictures’ Guadeloupe-based crime drama Death in Paradise a sixth season. Claimed to be the third highest-rating UK drama of 2015, it is also the fourth best-selling British drama export, having been sold to 237 territories.

Also in the UK, BBC2 has ordered a second season of Touchpaper TV’s confessional drama series Murder. The Bafta-winning series was co-created by Robert Jones and Kath Mattock and written by Robert Jones. Continuing with the same format, Murder uses confessions to revisit the missing moments leading up to a death, in search of the truth. Jones and Mattock spent months in the public galleries of the Old Bailey researching real-life murder cases for inspiration and authenticity.

Intercut with CCTV footage, live action and forensic evidence, the show sees protagonists speaking to the camera and giving their version of events. But where does the truth lie when different versions don’t add up?

Elsewhere, SVT in Sweden has ordered a multi-generational drama set at the end of the Second World War in and around a family-run restaurant. Our Time is Now is a 20-part series that explores the lives of the family members and delves into their ambitions following the end of the conflict. The show is set to air in late 2017 and is being coproduced by SVT, Modern Times Group-owned Viaplay and film fund Film Väst. The main writer is Ulf Kvensler and the story is based on an idea by Johan Rosalind.

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US networks go easy with the axe

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Minority Report has been cut to 10 episodes
Fox has cut sci-fi drama Minority Report to 10 episodes

The big four US networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) are playing a strange game this year. Usually by now they would have axed their underperforming new shows.

But instead they have adopted a policy of reducing the number of episodes they initially ordered then letting the shows in question quietly crawl away to die.

A case in point is Fox’s Minority Report, which was initially meant to have 13 episodes. But after failing to impress in the ratings, its order was cut to 10. The same has happened to ABC’s Blood and Oil and NBC’s Truth Be Told, also reduced to 10. NBC also cut Wesley Snipes drama The Player to nine episodes after poor ratings.

Various theories have been put forward to explain this emerging trend. One is that the networks have decided to give scripted shows more time because of the complex nature of audience behaviour these days. With so much time-shifting going on, they don’t want to kill a show off before they know for sure it is a dud.

This thesis takes on added weight now that subscription VoD platforms like Netflix and Amazon have started picking up and reviving a few axed shows. The last thing the networks want to do is produce a show and then hand the benefit to their fast-growing rivals.

Another possibility, mooted by E! News, is that networks don’t want to face flak from fans by axing a show early. By giving these shows a reasonable run out, it’s a way of reducing the size of the social media backlash that invariably follows cancellation.

Alternatively, there may be a commercial agenda here. Possibly the networks have decided there’s more value in having nine or 10 episodes of a show with closure than four or five without a satisfactory end. Such is the international demand for drama content that maybe there is an opportunity to recoup some of the cost of production via the distribution side of the business.

Wicked City is struggling on ABC
Wicked City is struggling on ABC

Some international channels would rather have a single series of a big-budget American series (complete with star) than none at all.

Whatever the reason, it will be interesting to see what it takes to finally push one of the big four networks over the edge into cancelling a scripted show. There is, for example, a particularly badly performing anthology show on ABC right now called Wicked City.

Three episodes in, the show has seen its ratings fall from 3.3 million to 2.4 million to 1.7 million, making it the joint lowest-rated non-Saturday drama original on the major four broadcast networks in Nielsen People Meter history. If that isn’t a good enough reason to axe a series then we may never see a cancellation again.

While Minority Report has failed to live up to expectations, another Philip K Dick-based project is receiving plenty of plaudits ahead of its appearance on Amazon. The Man in the High Castle, a 10-parter that will launch on November 20, is an alternative-history drama that imagines a world in which the Nazis and Japan each control half of the US (having won the Second World War).

Adapted for TV by Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files), a recent screening of the show received a swathe of positive reviews. While we are unlike to ever see any ratings for The Man in the High Castle, Amazon is confident it could be a game-changer for the platform.

Buzz is building around Amazon's The Man in the High Castle
Buzz is building around Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle

Russell Morris, marketing and merchandising director of Amazon Video in the UK, says: “All the data points to this being our out-and-out success.” It’s unusual for Amazon to be so openly enthusiastic, but an 8.4 rating on IMDb suggests the series is already starting to build up some decent momentum.

There are also positive noises for Crackle’s The Art of More, which debuts on November 19. Starring Dennis Quaid as a ruthless real-estate billionaire, the 10-episode first season is set in a high-octane version of the art world, where rival auction houses battle to secure the best clients and works of art are smuggled into the US from exotic locations.

Deadline – particularly impressed with Quaid’s performance – has declared itself a fan of the show, which has already managed to rack up quite a few international sales.

While The Man in the High Castle and The Art of More are yet to launch, one show that has already established itself as a huge franchise is FX’s anthology drama American Horror Story (AHS), created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk.

Now in its fifth season, AHS: Hotel, the show is averaging 3.8 million viewers, which makes it the channel’s highest-rated scripted series. As a reward for its strong showing, FX this week announced that there will be a sixth season.

John Landgraf, CEO of FX Networks and FX Productions, says: “American Horror Story has unquestionably joined the ranks of television’s landmark series. From Murder House to Hotel, AHS has pioneered a new TV form as well becoming FX’s highest-rated show – while also pushing every conceivable boundary of creative excellence and audacity.

The Art of More begins on Crackle next week
The Art of More begins on Crackle next week

“This is even more remarkable because Ryan and Brad tear up the playbook every year, challenging the entire creative team to come up with something even more spectacular, frightful and entertaining. You could not ask more of an artist, their team or a series.”

The icing on the cake for FX is that AHS is not just a ratings success, but also an award winner. The first four seasons received 71 Emmy nominations and 13 Emmy wins, including five awards for its fourth instalment, AHS: Freak Show.

Finally, this week, it’s interesting to note that there is another trend in the market right now – the ‘falling off a cliff’ phenomenon. This is where shows start incredibly strongly then see their ratings collapse almost immediately. ABC’s The Muppets is a case in point, with its ratings dropping from nine million to 5.8 million viewers between episodes one and two and then continuing to slide, so that they are now below the four million mark at episode seven.

CBS’s Supergirl is now experiencing something similar, with ratings for the first three episodes going from 12.9 million to 8.9 million to eight million. Although some ground will be clawed back once the time-shifted numbers are in, that’s still a pretty precipitous drop. NBC’s Heroes Reborn and ABC’s Quantico are showing similar fragility.

The latest American Horror Story series, Hotel, continues to deliver for FX
The latest American Horror Story series, Hotel, continues to deliver for FX

What’s behind this? It seems to be a combination of two factors. First, networks are getting very good at generating a movie-style buzz around their new series so that audiences feel compelled to be in at the start. This is particularly true when we’re talking about a rebooted idea, because large swathes of the TV population are lured in by the promise of a nostalgia fix.

Having grabbed the audience’s attention, however, the slightest misbeat on the part of the show and viewers lose interest – creating the mass migration effect seen with programmes like The Muppets.

Like the apocryphal script reader who knows 10 ten pages whether he or she is in the presence of a great script or another addition to the recycling pile, a significant part of the audience will cut its losses before the first ad break has occurred – turning to rival channels or second-screen entertainment.

An interesting premise or unusual setup may hold the audience in for a little longer, but in the end the only thing that will get them to come back for a second helping is genuinely compelling work. And even in this ‘golden age’ of drama, that is still quite rare.

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Netflix senses second-season success

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sense8-cast
Sense8 has been given a second run

As expected, SVoD giant Netflix has greenlit a second series of its acclaimed sci-fi series Sense8.

Fans were starting to get worried because of the long time the company seemed to be taking over an announcement. Usually, Netflix makes a decision within a month of a show’s completion – but this was a scary two-month gap.

Sense8 was created by Andy and Lana Wachowski and J Michael Straczynski, who are widely expected to come back on board for season two. The trio have previously said that they planned the series to run for five seasons, Netflix audience data analysis willing.

While much attention is paid to Netflix’s US originals, the company is also ordering an increasing number of international series to support its global roll-out. This week, for example, it ordered its first original series from Brazil, which is set to debut in 2016.

Produced by Boutique Filmes and directed by Cesar Charlone, 3% is billed as a “dramatic futuristic story set in a world divided between progress and devastation.” In 2011, Boutique Filmes released a three-episode pilot of 3% on YouTube that attracted more than 400,000 views.

Tiago Mello, the show’s executive producer, said: “Netflix’s willingness to invest in Brazilian content, local talent and creative storytelling is key for our growth as an industry. The story was created a few years ago and now I am thrilled that it will turn into a new original Netflix series.”

The second season of Fargo comes to FX in October
The second season of Fargo comes to FX in October

A lot of attention has been paid to the original commissions strategy at Netflix and Amazon, but there are a growing number of other on-demand/streaming services seeking to establish their credentials as sources of event drama.

Sony’s Crackle, for example, has just released a trailer for The Art of More, its first scripted drama. Starring Dennis Quaid (who is also an executive producer), Christian Cooke, Cary Elwes and Kate Bosworth, the 10-episode series will delve into “the surprisingly cutthroat and glamorous world of premium auction houses.”

The series follows Graham Connor (Cooke), a blue-collar upstart who leverages his way into this exclusive realm by exploiting connections to antiquities smuggling rings he was exposed to as a soldier in Iraq. Also inhabiting this rarified world is Sam Brukner (Quaid), a self-made billionaire who was somewhat ruthless on his way up the food chain in the real-estate world. Now he’s a tycoon with access to everything he desires and he wants everyone to know it – he’s a collector of both art and people.

The writers of The Art of More are Gardner Stern (NYPD Blue, Law and Order) and Chuck Rose. They are also executive producing alongside Quaid, Laurence Mark (Last Vegas, Julie & Julia, Dreamgirls), Gary Fleder (Runaway Jury, The Shield) and Tamara Chestna.

This week has also seen a number of announcements from US cable channel FX. Chief among them was news that Guillermo del Toro and Carlton Cuse’s thriller The Strain will return for a third season.

Eric Schrier, president of original programming at FX Networks and FX Productions, said: “Guillermo and Carlton have delivered two thrilling seasons of The Strain that are captivating and visually arresting, doing justice to the original novel trilogy and meeting fans’ high expectations in the process.”

The Mark Wahlberg movie Shooter, which is being adapted into a series starring Ryan Phillippe
The Mark Wahlberg movie Shooter, which is being adapted into a series starring Ryan Phillippe

FX has also set the premiere dates for a number of its hotly anticipated new series. Kurt Sutter’s new drama The Bastard Executioner will start on September 15. The show is described as “a blood-soaked, medieval epic that tells the story of Wilkin Brattle (Lee Jones), a 14th century warrior whose life is forever changed when a divine messenger beseeches him to lay down his sword and lead the life of another man: a journeyman executioner. Set in Wales during a time rife with rebellion and political upheaval, Wilkin must walk a tightrope between protecting his identity while also serving a mysterious destiny.”

Other FX series coming up are American Horror Story: Hotel, which debuts on October 7, and the new edition of Fargo, set to premiere on October 12. If that sounds like an exciting line-up of drama then you should probably enjoy it while you can.

At the recent TCA (Television Critics Association) event in the US, FX Networks CEO John Landgraf caused a stir when he said “there is simply too much television.” He predicted that the number of original scripted series will reach a peak in the next two years before starting to decline. FX currently has 20 original scripted series across FX and sister network FXX.

Economics dictate that it won’t go any higher, though Landgraf had originally hoped to take the total up to 24. One inference from his comments is that the scripted industry will soon experience a retraction, which may in turn lead to some company closures or consolidations.

Big news on the international coproduction front is that The Weinstein Company (TWC) and ITV Studios Global Entertainment have joined forces to make a 10-part gangster series set amid the fall of the Soviet Union. Called Mafiya, the series is being written by William Nicholson (Gladiator, Shadowlands) and produced by Archery Pictures, the UK producer set up by Kris Thykier and former Scott Free UK chief Liza Marshall. Set in Moscow in the 1990s, the mob series will follow the rise of a street trader who becomes one of the richest and most powerful people in the country.

ITV has commissioned a three-part Scott & Bailey special
ITV has commissioned a three-part Scott & Bailey special, to be produced by Red Production Company.

This week also brought news that the Mark Wahlberg movie Shooter is being reinvented as a TV series. The small-screen version of the 2007 Paramount film will star Ryan Phillippe and is being written by John Hlavin. Phillippe plays a former Marine sniper who is brought back into action to thwart the killing of the president.

Other greenlights this week include Wanted (working title), a thriller for Australia’s Seven Network. Scripted by Timothy Hobart, John Ridley and Kirsty Fisher, this story follows two strangers who intervene in a deadly carjacking and are swept up in a chase across Australia in a car full of money. Shooting starts in October in Brisbane, with Screen Queensland investing in the project.

In the UK, meanwhile, broadcaster ITV has commissioned a special three-part run of cop drama Scott & Bailey, featuring a single crime story to be produced by Red Production Company. Explaining the three-part format, ITV said it will “allow the story to unfold with scale and ambition as Scott and Bailey tackle one of the biggest and darkest cases they have ever had to face.”

The drama will be executive produced by Red’s Nicola Shindler and written by Lee Warburton and Paul Logan. “We’re delighted to be returning to Scott & Bailey with an investigation that will have everlasting consequences for the characters,” said Shindler. “This series is more ambitious and sinister than ever before and the concept of a three-part story allows us the opportunity to tackle a story of epic scale and ambition.”

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