New Abrams Pilot
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The ever-busy J.J. Abrams has a new pilot in progress, this one featuring a girl with special powers.
The NBC pilot will be directed by the Oscar-nominated Alfonso Cuarón, and written by Mark Friedman (Home of the Brave).
The new pilot’s story will concern a girl “in possession of a great gift/powers – which will come into their own in seven years – and the man who is sprung from prison to protect her from those trying to hunt her down.”
The pilot will be produced by Warner Bros. TV and Bad Robot, with executive producers Abrams, Cuarón, Friedman and Bryan Burk. Kathy Lingg will co-executive produce.
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Ok, I like this guy’s work but come on… make sure your current show isn’t going to get cancel;led before throwing another one out there!
Why? It’s the sperm approach. It seems to work for broadcast spawners. JJ is just taking term literally.
What disturbs me is that it sounds like a show devoted to weekly attempted murders of a child. Not only that, but it sounds like they won’t have to do any special effects for seven years until she finally “comes into her own” and is actually able to demonstrate powers. So it’s a soap opera. But we all know she is as likely to get killed as Gilligan is to get rescued. Show over. (Same with Revolution and electricity). Plus, stupid networks don’t let these kinds of teaser shows run to length anymore. They put them on at knuckleheaded times and make them go on hiatus for months just so they can justify killing off the show and – I don’t know – collect the cancellation insurance or something? So what’s the point?
“So it’s a soap opera. But we all know she is as likely to get killed as Gilligan is to get rescued. Show over.”
Sounds like your ability to suspend disbelief is lacking, because that’s a silly argument that can be used to dismiss any show. Like so: “We all know Captain Picard won’t be killed every week. Show over.” Only persons deficient in imagination would make such a claim and mean it. I imagine you don’t really mean it.
“They put them on at knuckleheaded times and make them go on hiatus for
months just so they can justify killing off the show and – I don’t know –
collect the cancellation insurance or something?”
This conspiracy theory has nothing to it. No one wants a series project to fail, let alone the expensive speculative-fiction type series. Money is lost. There’s no payoff. They often lose money on it up front even if the ratings are reasonably good; disc sales, merchandising and syndication deals are the big payoffs, but those are down the line and you have to succeed to get there.
Star Trek was not a show about multiple people trying to hunt down a little girl each week.
How can educated network programming executives be so stupid for so many years without being intentionally stupid?
Just for example, Fox has screwed Joss Whedon twice in exactly the same fashion. Not to mention what TNT did to Babylon 5 in the 5th season, Witchblade, and pretty much anything interesting they’ve ever had their hands on. If it’s not a desire to see a genre project fail, then I’m hard pressed to say what the hell their motivation is.
Quite simply, educated network programming executives are motivated by monetary and fiscal gain. One of the seven deadly sins known as greed(which sounds like another description for shit in general). They could care less about artistic quality in the spectrum of things. Their only goal is to make a profit.
All the more reason why the quality and content of television and the cinema sucks these days.
Ok, I hear you. But how do consistent acts of sabotage that obviously lose viewers help the bottom line?