PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
Viceland ordered The Hunt for the Trump Tapes with Tom Arnold. The cable net has begun production on the eight-episode series to bow later this year. “Nobody thought I could ever be an investigative journalist, but then again, nobody thought Donald Trump could be president,” said Arnold, announcing the news on The Howard Stern Show. “Let’s hope this marks the end of both our new careers.”
CBS All Access renewed The Good Fight for a third season. “The Good Fight is a perfect example of what we strive for a CBS All Access original series to be: thought provoking, boundary pushing and, most of all, incredibly entertaining,” said Julie McNamara, EVP, Original Content, CBS All Access. “We can’t wait to see what Robert and Michelle King, their creative team and the incomparable cast will bring to audiences in season three.”
Upcoming DC digital service, DC Universe, gave a script-to-series order to Swamp Thing. The drama is based on the DC characters created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson. Contingent on a script, the series is targeting a 2019 premiere.
Apple issued a 10-episode series order to Are You Sleeping, a thriller drama starring Octavia Spencer. Based on the true crime novel by Kathleen Barber, it provides a unique glimpse of America’s obsession with true-crime podcasts. Project hails from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and Peter Chernin’s Chernin Entertainment and Endeavor Content.
NEW & RETURNING SERIES
Season 4 of Showtime’s The Affair debuts Sunday, June 17 at 9p. In addition, beginning Friday, May 11, consumers will be able to watch the show’s complete first season for free on YouTube, Facebook and SHO.com.
Black Ink Crew: Chicago returns Wednesday, May 30 at 8p on VH1.
FX set a premiere date for Season 2 of Snowfall: Thursday, July 19 at 10p.
Hunting ISIS, an original documentary series that follows a group of veteran and civilian volunteers who travel to Syria and Iraq to fight against ISIS alongside local militias, bows Tuesday, May 29 at 10p on History. Also airs Sunday, June 3 at 10p on Viceland.
Casey Webb continues the pursuit of his next culinary conquest, when Travel Channel’s Man v. Food returns with back-to-back episodes on Monday, May 28 at 9p and 9:30p.
COMING UP
Centroamerica TV airs extensive live coverage of the 2018 Costa Rican Presidential Inauguration of the 48th president, Carlos Alvarado, on Tuesday, May 8 at 12:30p.
A five-hour I’m Sorry marathon airs on truTV on Mother’s Day. Starts at 9a on Sunday, May 13.
TLC brings back This Is Life Live, beginning Sunday May 13 at 9p. The four-night event captures live-altering experiences as they unfold in real time. Lisa Joyner returns as host and is joined by co-host Chris Jacobs (Long Lost Family).
Cozi TV celebrates the long-awaited royal nuptials with a two-part wedding special of The Nanny on Friday, May 18 at 7p.
ADVERTISING
Science Channel and Seeker partnered with Enterprise Rent-A-Car for a new 360-degree campaign. The Move Forward Campaign will span social, digital, linear TV, OTT and experiential, reinforcing Enterprise’s commitment to innovation and the future of mobility focus.
Research by the Association of National Advertisers’ #SeeHer movement, in collaboration with TiVo, showed that ads that portray women and girls accurately are more socially acceptable and well-liked by both men and women surveyed. Those ads work even better when paired with programming that portrays women accurately. It’s called GEMfit, when ads that score high in the ANA’s Gender Equality Measure are aired on high-scoring programs, delivering better sales than when airing on low-scoring programs.
CASTING
Jonathan Majors (Hostiles) was cast as the lead opposite Jurnee Smollett-Bell in HBO straight-to-series drama Lovecraft Country… Riverdale’s Vanessa Morgan and Charles Melton were upped to series regular, effective next season… Kiran Deol (The Mindy Project, New Girl) and Moses Storm (Conan, Arrested Development) will star in Arranged, a half-hour comedy pilot ordered by Pop TV.
DIGITAL DOINGS
Netflix’s upcoming Sabrina, the Teenage Witch series has been titled. The show will share its name with the comic book series on which it’s based: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
The cord-cutting trend threatening the future of the pay-TV industry was not just confined to the U.S. in 2017, according to business information provider HIS Markit. Total pay-TV subscriptions also declined in 13 other markets; namely, Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Israel, Venezuela and Ireland.
Amazon set a Friday, June 15 premiere date for the second season of Goliath, the original drama series starring Billy Bob Thornton.
CBS News relaunched Intelligence Matters, former CIA acting director Michael Morell’s podcast featuring interviews with top leaders in national security. The new edition, which became available May 2, features an interview with former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden.
Castle Rock, the psychological-horror anthology from J.J. Abrams and Stephen King, premieres Wednesday July 25 with the first three episodes on Hulu.
AT&T livestreams the 2018 iHeartCountry Festival by AT&T at www.att.com/iHeartCountry and on Twitter live on Saturday, May 5 at 8p.
A+E Networks chose You.i TV as the enabling technology to extend its History TVE app, a streaming service that offers hundreds of hours of programming, to TV-connected devices.
GOING GLOBAL
Poppy Montgomery (Without a Trace, Unforgettable) is set to star in and executive produce a drama from ABC Studios International for French broadcaster M6. The untitled English-language crime drama sees Montgomery playing Cat Chambers, a thief-turned-fixer for the governor of a Pacific Island archipelago.
Sony Pictures Television ordered Reckoning, a 10-episode straight-to-series psychological thriller from writer David Hubbard (Noel) and vet showrunner David Eick (Battlestar Galactica, Falling Skies). Begins filming July 9 in Australia for premiere on SPTN’s international channels.
Discovery struck a deal with Channel 4’s Walter Presents to launch the premium drama service in Italy. Programming begins in September 2018.
Seville International secured international rights to Anthropocen and will launch sales of the documentary in Cannes.
STUDIOCANAL licensed drama Trust Me to ARTE, the leading cultural channel in Europe.
Principal photography has begun on Germanized. The dramedy is produced by Bavaria Fiction with Telfrance for Amazon Prime Video and Deutsche Telekom.
Insight TV commissioned a second season of Thru to air in December 2018. The series, which was unveiled at last year’s MIPCOM event in Cannes, sees competing teams trek through highly challenging terrain.
Sony Entertainment partnered with global licensing agency Centa IP to oversee licensing and retail development for new series Go Away, Unicorn!
