A whole slew of women are diving headfirst into television and developing new series for consideration.
As Variety reports, ABC and 20th Century Fox are developing “Icon,” an hour-long drama set in the fashion world. The series will follow “an up-and-coming designer whose rising star makes it more difficult to escape his inner demons.”
The project, from Conde Nast Entertainment, was created by journalist Anne Marie O’Connor who previously created the British comedy series “Trollied.” O’Connor will serve as executive producer with Dawn Ostroff, Jon Koa, and “Empire” executive producer Sanaa Hamri, who will also direct the pilot.
The series sounds like it will mix the high-end fashions of a film like “The Devil Wears Prada” with the serial drama of something like “Empire,” or “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Gloria Reuben, who spent years on “ER” and now acts on “Mr. Robot,” is adapting the Dean Koontz novel “Dark Rivers of the Heart” for TV, Deadline reports. “The psychological thriller centers on an ex-Marine, haunted by a tortured past, who is on the run with a mysterious, troubled woman who witnessed the murder of her husband and parents. The lethal servant of a black ops government agency, corrupt in mind and deed, is their relentless pursuer,” Deadline writes.
“I’m delighted to be working with Gloria Reuben, and I’m no less delighted by the team that has coalesced around her. Television has become the ideal medium for long multiple-thread novels like ‘Dark Rivers of the Heart,’ and I look forward to binge-watching this!” said Koontz.
Finally, veteran showrunners Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters have multiple projects in the works, with a number of projects at ABC, Freeform, and Amazon. Fazekas and Butters recently served as executive producers and showrunners on “Marvel’s Agent Carter” and “Resurrection.”
The duo’s production company, Fazekas & Butters, has sold two hour-long projects to ABC: the first has a Disney theme park tie-in, and the second is a project written by filmmaker Nisha Ganatra, who will also executive produce and direct. The dramedy, Deadline writes, “explores themes of identity, the immigrant experience and the search for love through a multi-generational Indian American family.”
For Freeform, an as-yet-untitled project follows the “four Sage children, who stumbled into the magical world of Arcana 14 years ago. Now, reunited after the mysterious death of their father, the Sages must put aside their differences and come together as a family in order to confront an invasion of our world from Arcana, eager to make the siblings answer for the sins of the past.”
At Amazon, Fazekas & Butters is developing “The Problem with Mel Purview,” a darkly humorous contemporary noir following “Mel Purview, who is sucked into the highly organized criminal underworld of modern Los Angeles as he is forced by kidnappers to lead a secretive double life.”
The duo has also optioned the rights to Wesley Chu’s “Tao” book trilogy for a series titled “The Lives of Tao.” The series centers on “an out-of-shape, rudderless IT guy who, when inhabited by a centuries-old alien named Tao, becomes a secret agent in order to save humanity from warring alien factions.”
With these announcements, it seems that female showrunners and creators are making some headway when it comes to breaking through the glass ceiling at TV networks. This will hopefully lead to more female writers, directors, and female-centric series down the line.
