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Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick would take over for departing showrunner Dee Johnson.
Nashville is making a big behind-the-scenes change ahead of a potential fifth season.
Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick (My So-Called Life, thirtysomething) are poised to take over as showrunners of the ABC country music drama if the series is renewed, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
The duo would take over for Dee Johnson, who will depart at the end of the current fourth season. This would mark the first time the two longtime writing partners would run a show they did not create. The announcement comes on the heels of their new overall deal at Lionsgate, which produces the series.
The series has not been renewed for season five, which would see the series hit its 100th episode. The drama is one of the few ABC originals series produced by an outside studio rather than in-house. "It's always so hard to know what's going to be the future. Those things are so completely out of our hands, so I always just wait to hear," star and producer Connie Britton told THR earlier this month when asked about a possible renewal.
Herskovitz and Zwick no strangers to ABC, where they created and ran the dramas thirtysomething, My So-Called Life and Once and Again. They more recently shepherded the 2008 NBC drama Quarterlife. Their feature credits include Love and Other Drugs and the upcoming Jack Reacher sequel.
Johnson has been with Nashville since season one. Her other credits include Boss and ER.
ABC declined to comment on the news, which was first reported by TVLine.
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