The CW Picks Up Roswell Reboot, Five Other Pilots
The CW went pilot wild on Tuesday.
Per Deadline, the network scooped up a Roswell reboot along with five other pilots: In the Dark, Skinny Dip, Playing Dead, The End of the World as We Know It, and Spencer.
The new Roswell series is based on Melinda Metz' Roswell High book series and refreshes the 1999 sci-fi series that starred Shiri Appleby as Liz Parker, Jason Behr as Max Evans, Katherine Heigl as Isabel Evans, Brendan Fehr as Michael Guerin, Majandra Delfino as Maria DeLuca, Colin Hanks as Alex Whitman, Nick Wechsler as Kyle Valenti, William Sadler as Sheriff Jim Valenti, Emilie de Ravin as Tess Harding, and Adam Rodríguez as Jesse Ramirez. Carina Adly MacKenzie wrote the pilot and executive produces the reboot alongside Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Lawrence Bender, and Kevin Kelly Brown.
The CW provided a logline for the new Roswell: "After reluctantly returning to her tourist-trap hometown of Roswell, New Mexico, the daughter of undocumented immigrants discovers a shocking truth about her teenage crush who is now a police officer: He's an alien who has kept his unearthly abilities hidden his entire life. She protects his secret as the two reconnect and begin to investigate his origins, but when a violent attack and long-standing government cover-up point to a greater alien presence on Earth, the politics of fear and hatred threaten to expose him and destroy their deepening romance."
Written and executive produced by Corinne Kingsbury, In the Dark follows a "flawed and irreverent blind woman" who witnesses the murder of her friend. When law enforcement officers brush aside the woman's story, she ventures to track down her fallen friend's killer — all while "managing her colorful dating life and the job she hates at Breaking Blind, the guide dog school owned by her overprotective parents," and tending to her own pup, Pretzel. Ben Stiller, Jackie Cohn, and Nicky Weinstock executive produce.
Skinny Dip is based on the acclaimed novel by Carl Hiaasen, and has writer-executive producers Russel Friend and Garrett Lerner on board. Peter Traugott and Rachel Kaplan also executive produce. Here's the summary for the new project: "After her husband tries to kill her on what she thought was a romantic cruise to celebrate their second wedding anniversary, a woman teams with a jaded ex-cop to exact her own twisted brand of revenge on her cheating spouse, and winds up uncovering a wider conspiracy in the process."
From writers Rina Mimoun and Josh Reims and EPs Tariq Jalil and Lucas Carter, Playing Dead is a "dysfunctional family dramedy about a mortician and his son whose lives are turned upside down when the woman who abandoned them 15 years ago returns and asks them to fake her death."
Another potential series based on a book, The End of the World as We Know It is the small-screen adaptation of Iva-Marie Palmer's work of the same name, which centers around two young women who are living in the aftermath of a dangerous alien invasion. After a prison ship crash-lands in Southern California and releases the universe's most deadly creatures, a space cop recruits the ladies to trace the escaped criminals, who are now blending into the SoCal landscape as "eccentric Angelenos." Rob Thomas, Danielle Stokdyk, Dan Etheridge, Leslie Morgenstein, and Gina Girolamo are attached to executive produce, with Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker on board as writer-EPs.
Lastly, the CW snagged Spencer from DCEU creatives Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter. Penned by April Blair, Spencer is inspired by the life of professional football player Spencer Paysinger. Here's the logline: "When a rising high school football player from South Central L.A. is recruited to play for Beverly Hills High, the wins, losses, and struggles of two families from vastly different worlds — Compton and Beverly Hills — begin to collide." Spencer was first announced back in late September of 2017, when it was still untitled.
These six new projects join Wayward Sisters, Charmed, and Dead Inside to bring the CW's pilot pull up to nine total.