PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
Tyler Perry set his first series—White House drama The Oval—at BET as part of his multiyear content deal with network parent Viacom. Starring Ed Quinn, Kron Moore, Paige Hurd and Daniel Croix Henderson, series is slated to begin principal photography this summer at Tyler Perry Studios, home to its writer, director and exec producer. The Oval introduces a new family moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who seem perfect on the outside but behind closed doors are rife with cheating, lies and corruption.
John Wells Productions renewed its ties to Warner Bros. Television via a five-year overall deal that extends the producer’s tenure at the studio to nearly 40 years. The pact, reportedly in the nine figures and running through 2024, will see Wells’ company developing a range of content for various Warner Bros. TV imprints.
On the heels of the conviction of Keith Raniere for racketeering, sex trafficking and other crimes, Investigation Discovery committed to The Lost Women of Nxivm, a two-hour special from Ample Entertainment, slated to premiere on the network this December. Series takes viewers inside the active investigation to explore what really happened to Kristin Snyder, Gina Hutchinson, and other women of Nxivm, and tracks down past members, informants and eyewitnesses—many going on the record for the first time.
Sports producer Whisper Films—set up by Formula 1 racing driver David Coulthard, sports presenter Jake Humphrey and Sunil Patel, is teaming with East Media for an entertainment venture. Whisper Films invested in East Media, which in turn will be looking for opportunities around live events, sporting series and documentaries within Whisper’s current portfolio.
Wattpad Studios and Netherlands-based NL Film are in a new Dutch-language partnership that will see NL Film, part of EndemolShine Nederland, gaining exclusive first-look rights to adapt Dutch-language stories from Wattpad with a focus on developing young adult stories as TV series or films.
Netflix is making moves around the globe. The streamer is adapting Scandinavian movie trilogy Snabba Cash (Easy Money) as a six-part series in partnership with screenwriter Oskar Soderlund and author Jens Lapidus. Series, set in Stockholm 10 years after the events depicted in the feature films, touches down in an environment where status and money have a stronger pull than ever, and the entrepreneurial jet set and the criminal worlds collide. Series is produced by Nicklas Wikstrom (A Man Called Ove)… Netflix also wrapped filming its first German Original film, Concrete Gold, starring David Kross (The Reader), Frederick Lau (Victoria) and Janina Uhse (Good Times, Bad Times). The UFA-produced thriller follows the rise and fall of three corrupt real estate agents, and is one of a slate of Netflix originals from Germany due to shoot this year.
NEW & RETURNING SERIES
MTV’s Nick Cannon Presents: Wild ‘N Out franchise continues to expand its footprint, with a summer road trip on sister net VH1 beginning Sunday, July 7 at 7p. New episodes will feature stars from VH1’s Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood and Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, as well as Tiny Harris, Wiz Khalifa, Marlon Wayans, Swizz Beatz, T-Pain, Anderson .Paak and Ne-Yo. Then in August, the franchise will get its own Pluto channel, where each ep will pit the red & black teams, comprising returning and new cast members, against each other. Series is exec produced by Cannon and Michael Goldman for NCredible Entertainment. Nile Evans and Annie Gillies serve as showrunners and exec producers. Candida Boyette-Clemons is exec producer for MTV.
A new season of Discovery Channel’s Fast N’ Loud revs up Monday, July 8 at 9p as Richard Rawlings and his team at Gas Monkey Garage hope to take their business to new heights and a new level of success in the hotrod world. Russell J. Holmes from Discovery’s Garage Hub will be joining the team this year, and the season will also feature a partnership with HGTV and The Brady Bunch to build a station wagon, with Barry Williams spearheading an incredible surprise for the entire Brady kids cast.
A House Divided, a multigenerational family saga from AMC Networks’ UMC (Urban Movie Channel), starts streaming at www.UMC.tv on Thursday, July 12. Series, which expands UMC’s scripted content offering, follows the direct descendants of Letty Sanders, an enslaved woman who after arriving in LA in 1821, grew to become the wealthiest black woman in the newly formed city.
Before Neil Armstrong became the first person to step foot on the surface of the moon, humankind’s earliest ancestors laid the groundwork to make this feat possible. Upcoming PBS series Ancient Skies reveals centuries of knowledge, experimentation and engineering that helped previous civilizations explore outer space. Three-part series premieres Wednesday, July 24 at 8p.
From Peru, Laos and Morocco to Hawaii, Alaska and New Zealand, Gordon Ramsay is trotting the globe in search of culinary inspiration in National Geographic’s new series Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, premiering Sunday, July 21, at 10p. The multi-Michelin-star chef and Ironman athlete will meet with indigenous people around the world to learn about the cultures, dishes and flavors unique to each location—and create new dishes from scratch.
A&E Network will drop a new season of Intervention, which combats the drug epidemic in various cities and neighborhoods in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, August 6 at 9p. Six consecutive episodes will follow the stories of addicts as they work to overcome their opioid addictions as well as one of the most dramatic recoveries in one of the largest drug hubs on the East Coast.
Monday, August 12 is the premiere date for Our Boys, the 10-part HBO limited series that will debut with two one-hour back-to-back episodes beginning at 9p, followed by single eps debuting subsequent Mondays. Our Boys is set in the summer of 2014, when an agent from the internal terror division of Israel’s Shin Bet investigates the murder of three Jewish teenagers who are kidnapped and slain by Hamas militants while at the same time parents of a Palestinian teenager from eastern Jerusalem who is burned and left dead in the woods begin their anguished journey toward justice.
Also on August 12, AMC will launch season 2 of anthology The Terror: Infamy, for which the network yesterday trotted out a new trailer. The sneak peak begins with audio of FDR’s speech to Congress the morning after the December 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Showtime released the first-look teaser for the fifth and final season of Golden Globe-winning series The Affair, which bows Sunday, August 25 at 9p. Season 5 will chronicle the aftermath of last season’s horrific events and find the characters coming to terms with the consequences of their choices.
COMING UP
CBS Sports and the BIG3 announced the broadcast team for the 2019 season, which begins this Saturday, June 22 at 8p on CBS. The team will again feature longtime play-by-play announcer Brian Custer, analyst Jim Jackson and sideline reporter Michael Rapaport, who will all return for their third campaigns. The lineup also includes new adds Carter Blackburn, Brendan Haywood, Brandon Tierney, Avery Johnson and Ed Cohen. During the 11-week season, games will air live on CBS and CBS Sports Network on Saturdays and Sundays, with a champion crowned live on Sunday, September 1 at 3p.
Forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls goes in search of a Nazi SS camp constructed in secrecy on the British Channel island of Alderney during World War II in the special Adolf Island, premiering Sunday, June 23 at 10p on Smithsonian Channel. “Shining a spotlight on forgotten or misinterpreted history is the essence of what we try to do at Smithsonian Channel,” says David Royle, chief programming officer.
A&E’s Biography episode JFK Jr.-The Final Year is slated to premiere July 16 at 9p.
Steve Rotfeld Productions is marking the 50th anniversary of the moon landing with three projects. has announced three projects. The Apollo Chronicles, a four-hour doc that spans the years 1957-69, has been syndicated to broadcast stations covering over 90 percent of US households, and will premiere in most markets on Saturday, July 20, primarily on the CW. One-hour doc The Armstrong Tapes is based on 70 hours of never-before-heard audio interviews with Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. A co-production between SRP and National Geographic Channel, it will air on Nat Geo Monday, July 8 at 9p. Finally, Countdown To Apollo is an archive-based format consisting of eight half-hour shows, where each episode explores short stories from the Apollo program. The series is part of SRP’s syndicated Saturday three-hour block Xploration Station block that airs on Fox stations throughout the US.
Smithsonian Channel’s probing series America’s Hidden Stories, known for pulling back the curtain on history we thought we knew, puts the lens on Sir George Yeardley and a single year, 1619, during which Yeardley presided over the first democratic assembly in English-speaking America and purchased the first captive Africans for an English colony—opening America to the horrors of slavery. The Mystery at Jamestown ep airs on the 400th anniversary of the assembly, Monday, July 29 at 8p.
TECH TALK
Live Nation will begin streaming live events in augmented reality in September, starting with the Music Midtown festival in Atlanta. The event promoter and venue operator announced its new initiative at the Cannes Lions festival, where it also introduced Hyundai as the sponsor of the AR experience. The music content will still be streamed in traditional 2D, but will be presented alongside a few AR features. Live Nation also noted there will be a dedicated AR VIP mode that will offer fans access to unique camera angles.
Grammy-nominated rapper Jeezy is teaming with telecom businessman Freddie Figgers, founder of Figgers Communications, to create and distribute tech products including a “F3” cellular phone and the “F-Buds” earpods at lower price points than found on many products in their verticals. The F3 phone features an edge-to-edge 4K display with 18 Megapixel dual cameras, and will retail for $449. F-Buds, at $49 a pair, are equipped with built-in microphones and designed to pair up with any Bluetooth device.
Sprite launched new campaign “Thirst For Yours,” featuring emerging hip-hop artist Kodie Shane and rising fashion designer Seth Giscombe in two 30-second spots.
KIDS NEWS
On Thursday, June 27, the Boomerang streaming service will debut Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, with new eps will roll out weekly through the season finale Thursday, September 19. Starting in July, Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? also will air weekly on Cartoon Network in the US as well as roll out globally on Boomerang linear later this year.
Where’s Waldo? Kids will find out Saturday, July 20 at 10a when the new animated series from DreamWorks Animation bows on Universal Kids, bringing the iconic character to life in new adventures. Twelve-year-old Waldo (voiced by Joshua Rush) and his best pal Wenda (voiced by Haley Tju) are members of the Worldwide Wanderer Society who circle the globe celebrating cultures and solving problems through observation. Their mentor Wizard Whitebeard (voiced by Thomas Lennon) sends them on international missions, where they encounter perpetual trouble-maker Odlulu (voiced by Eva Carlton).
Daddy Yankee will performs his song “Con Calma” on the episode of Nickelodeon’s All That this Saturday, June 22, at 8:30p.
PODCAST POSTS
Tenderfoot TV is launching its newest podcast series Monster Presents: Insomniac, which explores the dark world of serial killers. Series, produced for iHeartRadio Original Podcasts, comes on the heels of Tenderfoot’s hot Atlanta Monster and Up and Vanished podcasts.
Today Gusto Worldwide Media president/CEO Chris Gusto will discuss food channel Gusto TV on the Tomorrow Will be Televised podcast.
CASTING
Jamie Neumann (The Deuce), Erica Tazel (The Good Fight) and Mac Brandt (Kingdom) will recur opposite Jonathan Majors, Courtney B. Vance and Jurnee Smollett-Bell on HBO’s forthcoming drama Lovecraft Country… Grammy winners Big Boi of OutKast and Kid Cudi are joining the first season on Shudder’s revival of anthology horror series Creepshow… Salma Hayek and Owen Wilson will topline Bliss, an Amazon Studios sci-fi drama film.
