ABC has lined up Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski and Overbrook Entertainment for a pandemic thriller serial.
The untitled project will be a closed-ended detective procedural show with an over arc that involves an enigmatic disease pandemic. The studio also describes the show as “high-octane,” which usually doesn’t mean anything, but is intended to imply lots of action and explosions.
Frankly, I’m picturing a crime drama in which the FBI and the CDC team up on some kind of task force to try to track down some biological terrorists, with each case bringing the team closer to the big boss, but all the while people are getting seriously ill, including one or two of the central characters.
I’d say one of them will likely hide their illness from the rest of the team at one point to stay on the case, putting the rest of them in danger. Also, one of the two central characters will be a sexy female agent. Probably from the CDC side so that the male lead can be more gun-totingly masculine.
These are all wildly fanciful guesses of course. It could be nothing like any of that. The only other things we do know are that Straczynski already wrote the pilot episode, and without filming or even casting it, ABC ordered up a 12 episode season of the show.
James Lassiter and Jada Pinket Smith – two thirds of the Overbrook founders – will join Straczynski in exec. producing the series.
No actors are yet involved in the project, and no official production or premiere dates have been announced, but if it stays on track, we can expect to see the pilot hit television screen in Fall 2013 or Spring 2014.
