DS9 Vets' 'The 4400' To Launch This Summer

The USA Network has picked up a new science fiction series from two Star Trek writer-producers.

Rene Echevarria and Ira Steven Behr, who worked on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine are behind The 4400, trade paper Variety reported. The series focuses on what happens when 4,400 humans are returned to Earth after being abducted by aliens.

USA will debut The 4400 this summer in conjunction with a new season of The Dead Zone, which comes from the pen of another Trek veteran, Michael Piller. A pilot and five episodes have been ordered, with the possibility of additional episodes in the future. However, The 4400 is only planned as a "limited series".

The pilot, co-written by Echevarria and Scott Peters (Highlander, The Outer Limits), starred Peter Coyote (Erin Brockovich), Taken's Joel Gretsch and Jacqueline McKenzie (Deep Blue Sea).

Since the end of Deep Space Nine, Echevarria has written for Now and Again and served as showrunner on Dark Angel, followed by a brief stint as executive producer of MDs. Behr worked on the short-lived comedy Bob Patterson before joining Echevarria on Dark Angel. He later served as executive producer of UPN's The Twilight Zone.

The original Variety article can be found here at Yahoo! News.

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