After more than 20 pilot orders Tuesday afternoon, the CW joined the festivities Wednesday, picking up a retooled version of The Selection and a Navy drama from Oscar nominee Taylor Hackford and Supernatural EP Sera Gamble.
The network continues to want a Hunger Games-type drama on the air, picking up to pilot a retooled version of The Selection, after passing on the pilot last year. CW president Mark Pedowitz told reporters earlier this month at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour that the script based on the book series by Kiera Cass was very "well done."
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Selection is described as an epic romance set 300 years in the future, centering on a poor young woman (Friday Night Lights' Aimee Teegarden played the part in last year's failed attempt) who is chosen by lottery to participate in a competition to become the next queen of a war-torn nation at a crossroads.
The Warner Bros. Television entry hails from writers Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain (666 Park Avenue, The Vampire Diaries). They're both repped by Bloom Hergott.
The network also picked up Company Town, a navy drama from Ray Oscar nominee Hackford and Gamble, who will write and executive produce. The drama starts after a scandal at a Naval base in Virginia touches the lives of both civilians and military personnel in the area, launching us into a multigenerational, multiclass, family and relationship series centered around two early twentysomething women who grew up together, were once best friends, but now are on opposite sides of the townie/military divide.
Hackford will executive produce and direct the pilot for the CBS Television Studios effort, with Bill Haber also on board as an EP.
In addition to Supernatural, Gamble also has a medical drama set up at ABC this development season with Greg Berlanti and Melissa Kellner Berman attached to exec produce.
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Hackford, whose credits also include An Officer and a Gentleman, The Devil's Advocate and an Oscar win for his 1978 live-action short Teenage Father, is repped by CAA and Stan Rosenfield. Gamble is with UTA and McKuin Frankel. Haber (Beauty and the Beast) is with CAA.
Meanwhile, despite getting an early jump on the casting process, an official pilot order for the CW's Wonder Woman prequel Amazon is awaiting word on its fate. Additional pilot orders at the network are expected.
The pickups join the network's supplement the CW's Vampire Diaries back-door pilot spinoff The Originals from Julie Plec, which previously was the network's lone order this season.
