'Charmed' Reboot Lands CW Pilot Order
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Bill Lawrence's 'Dead Inside' also gets the greenlight to move ahead at the younger-skewing broadcast network.
The CW threw its hat into the pilot season ring Thursday, handing out official orders to its retooled Charmed reboot and Bill Lawrence drama Dead Inside.
Redeveloped from last season, Charmed is written by Jessica O’Toole and Amy Rardin, who executive produce alongside their Jane the Virgin boss Jennie Urman. (Urman will get a story-by credit on the pilot.) The CW's Charmed is described as a "fierce, funny, feminist" reboot of the original series that centers on three sisters in a college town who discover they are witches. Between vanquishing supernatural demons, tearing down the patriarchy and maintaining familial bonds, a witch's work is never done.
The drama, from CBS Television Studios and exec produced by Brad Silberling (who directs) and Ben Silverman, was redeveloped from last pilot season when Urman had little time to focus on overseeing the script while she was wrapping Jane. Last season's version was set in 1976, while the new take moving forward is contemporary and set in the present day. Last year's project was said to be connected to the original series in some fashion, which would be compelling given that original Charmed stars, including Shannen Doherty, were among those who nixed returning to the franchise.
The Charmed pilot comes more than four years years after CBS announced plans to remake the original series, which ran on The WB Network for eight seasons from 1998-2006 and starred Doherty, Holly Marie Combs, Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan. The original was created by Constance M. Burge and exec produced by Aaron Spelling. CBS Television Studios, which owns the rights to Spelling's vast TV library, was attached to exec produce the CBS reboot in 2013. That project hailed from Party of Five co-creator Chris Keyser and Sydney Sidner. (Keyser, meanwhile, is rebooting Party of Five for Freeform.)
That The CW would order Charmed to pilot comes as little surprise as network topper Mark Pedowitz is said to have been high on it after letting the witchy Riverdale spinoff Sabrina move to Netflix with a hefty two-season, straight-to-series order.
Dead Inside, meanwhile, is written by Katie Lovejoy (Dracula, Eureka) and exec produced by Lawrence's Warner Bros. Television-based Doozer Productions with Jeff Ingold also earning EP credit. Here's the logline: "After surviving an explosion that killed her hotshot detective big brother, an underachieving beat cop starts seeing his ghost, flipping their sibling dynamic on its head and allowing her to truly live her life for the first time, as they work together to help crime victims both living and dead, and figure out the unfinished business keeping his spirit on Earth."
These are The CW's first official pilot orders for the 2018-19 broadcast season and join Supernatural planted-spinoff Wayward Sisters, which aired this month and awaits word on its future. The network, co-owned by CBS and Warner Bros. Television, remains committed to an equal share of pilot pickups from both studios.
Keep up with all the latest pilot orders, castings and eventual series pickups with THR'shandy guide.
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