NBC Greenlights 'Emerald City' and Miniseries 'The Slap'
Credit: Disney Enterprises, Inc.
NBC is headed to the Wonderful Land of Oz!
The network has given a 10-episode straight-to-series order for Emerald City, a reimagining of the classic Frank L. Baum books that have inspired iconic works such as The Wizard Of Oz, Wicked, and Oz the Great and Powerful.
Of course, with the good news of an Oz book, comes the catch that seems to be part of the fabric of broadcast TV these days: it will be a "modern reimagining".
Based on the 14-book series that brought the Land of Oz into the cultural consciousness, Emerald City will serve as a dramatic and modern repurposing of the tales that include "lethal warriors, competing kingdoms, and the Infamous wizard as we’ve never seen him before. A head-strong 20-year-old Dorothy Gale is unwittingly sent on an eye-opening journey that thrusts her into the center of an epic and bloody battle for the control of Oz."
It's honestly not a bad idea for a series, although I continue to be somewhat miffed that networks need to keep repurposing every story for the modern age, as if NBC doesn't expect we'll be able to relate to it unless it takes place in an age where Dorothy has an app for clicking her heels three times. Of course, this could simply be a matter of cost-cutting, as a period/fantasy series costs a whole hell of a lot more money than a modern retelling.
The show will be written by Matt Arnold and Josh Friedman, who will serve as executive producers for production company Universal Television. Yet while this is likely the highest-profile project on NBC and Universal Television's slate, it's not the only new show getting the greenlight this week. The network is borrowing a series from the real Land of Oz...
NBC has ordered eight episodes of the miniseries The Slap, based on the critically-acclaimed Australian project of the same name that aired in 2011.
Written by Jon Robin Baitz (The West Wing, Brothers & Sisters) and also produced by Universal Television, The Slap is described as "a complex family drama that explodes from one small incident where a man slaps another couple’s misbehaving child. This seemingly minor domestic dispute pulls the family apart, begins to expose long-held secrets, and ignites a lawsuit that challenges the core American values of all who are pulled into it."
The show sounds genuinely fascinating, although I really wish it had a less silly title. Sure, The Slap is what it's about, but I'm sure there's something else it could be called, something less easily mocked. Maybe Open-Palmed Tolerance? Or The Palm Thrust of Misbehavior? You know, something high-minded and not-at-all-pretentious.
Pulitzer finalist Baitz (the semi-autobiographical play A Fair Country), will write all episodes and executive produce alongside Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, Ted Gold and Tony Ayres.
No word on when Emerald City or The Slap will premiere, but let's hope it's soon. The 2014-2015 broadcast season is starting to fill up with pilot orders, but little of it seems all that exciting. These, at the very least, seem promising.