AMC orders new drama pilots from 'Breaking Bad,' 'Nikita' producers
AMC has ordered two new drama pilots with sky-high concepts and historical settings from producers of well-known shows.The first is Halt & Catch Fire, which depicts the personal computing boom in the 1980s. But instead of being set in all-too-familiar Silicon Valley, the setting is Texas’ “Silicon Prairie” (which generally refers to tech community in the Dallas and Fort Worth suburbs). Characters will include a fictional visionary, an engineer and a prodigy whose “innovations directly confront the corporate behemoths of the time.” The drama is created by Chris Cantwell and Chris Rodgers, with Mark Johnson and Melissa Bernstein (Breaking Bad) as executive producers.
The second is a Revolutionary War drama called Turn that’s based on the book Washington’s Spies by Alexander Rose. It’s set in the summer of 1778 and tells the story of New York farmer, Abe Woodhull, “who bands together with a group of childhood friends to form The Culper Ring, an unlikely group of spies who turn the tide in America’s fight for independence.” Turn is written by showrunner Craig Silverstein (Nikita) and executive produced by Barry Josephson (Bones).
Full story: Entertainment Weekly
AMC is a network that's had far more hits than misses, in the quality department. With Breaking Bad coming to an end next year, the network is looking to shore up its considerable resume, which includes critical and commercial successes such as Mad Men, The Walking Dead, and Hell On Wheels. Though AMC remains predominantly a network for airings of films (often of wildly varying quality) and syndicated reairings of broadcast series, the network seems intent on reestablishing its prestige status by crafting programming that can win over critics, audiences, and awards-giving bodies alike. Hopefully for the network, it'll be more on the Mad Men success scale, and less on the Rubicon scale. Either way, they're going to badly need more programming beyond simply airing half-hours like Comic Book Men and Talking Dead. (Not that there's anything wrong with Talking Dead...)