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CBS Greenlights a Batch of Projects — David E. Kelley, Robin Williams, ‘Homeland’ Producers All in the Mix

Feb 4, 2013  •  Post A Comment

CBS has unveiled a number of key programming moves, including giving a pilot order to a drama from three “Homeland” producers, Deadline.com reports.

The network also gave a pilot order to “Intelligence,” from writer Michael Seitzman, and officially ordered a pilot for David E. Kelley’s comedy “Crazy Ones,” which will star Robin Williams.

“Anatomy of Violence” comes from “Homeland” executive producers Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa and Alex Cary. The drama, “from 20th Century Fox TV and Gordon’s studio-based Teakwood Lane, already had a hefty pilot production commitment,” the report notes. “Inspired by the non-fiction book ‘The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime’ by Adrian Raine, it was written/executive produced by Gordon, Gansa and Cary. Cary joined the project after Gordon and Gansa originally sold it.

“The drama centers on a criminal psychologist with an expertise in sociopaths who partners with a young female detective with whom he shares a conflicted past. Teakwood’s Hugh Fitzpatrick is co-executive producing. ‘Anatomy of Violence’ is one of three pilots Gordon is exec producing, along with FX’s ‘Tyrant’ and TNT’s ‘Legends.’”

The Kelley/Williams project is “one of the highest wattage comedy packages this season,” the piece notes. It arrived at CBS in August and has informally had the go-ahead for a pilot since that time. “It has already hired a director, Jason Winer, and has been actively casting the other parts,” the story reports. 20th Century Fox TV is producing.

“Even without the big commitment, giving the project a production order was a no brainer,” Nellie Andreeva writes in the Deadline piece. “Let’s face it, you can’t judge a Robin Williams-starring vehicle without seeing it as he rarely sticks to the script. His improvisations on his previous TV series, ‘Mork & Mindy,’ were so hard to contain, Garry Marshall added a fourth camera to the three-camera format for him, thus ushering in the multi-camera comedy setup that is used til this day.”

Even so, the new project will be a single-camera piece, the report notes.

“It is set in the world of advertising and would star Williams as a brilliant ad executive working alongside his daughter,” the story reports. “As he often does, Kelley wrote the script on spec. He is executive producing with frequent collaborator Bill D’Elia, Winer, Dean Lorey, John Montgomery and Mark Teitelbaum. With its timing, CBS’s official green light for ‘Crazy Ones’ comes on the same day Kelley’s new TNT medical drama series ‘Monday Mornings’ premieres.”

Regarding Seitzman’s “Intelligence,” from ABC Studios, Andreeva writes: “The project’s prospects got a boost late last week when David Semel came on to direct and executive produce. Semel had been attached to NBC’s ‘Ironside’ remake. He is no longer involved in that project, which remains in serious contention at NBC with Blair Underwood, who is under a development deal at NBC, potentially playing the lead.”

The report adds: “Based on unpublished book ‘Dissident’ by John Dixon, ‘Intelligence’ is centered at US Cyber Command, and focuses on a unit that has been created around one agent with a very special gift, a microchip that has been implanted in his brain that allows him to access the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The premise of ‘Intelligence,’ which has a procedural element, is reminiscent of CBS’s ‘Person Of Interest,’ in which a duo tries to prevent crimes with the help of a top-notch computer program.”

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