Nellie Andreeva

Reaper creators/executive producers Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters have signed a two-year overall deal with CBS TV Studios. Under the seven-figure deal, which begins June 1, the two will serve as full-time consulting producers on the studio’s CBS cop drama Hawaii Five-0, which is all but picked up for next season. Additionally, they will develop new projects for the studio. This marks a return to the crime procedural genre for Fazekas and Butters who spent five seasons on NBC’s Law & Order: SVU, rising to co-executive producers and earning two WGA Award nominations. Fazekas and Butters are coming off a two-year overall deal at 20th TV where they created and exec produced last year’s ABC pilot Cutthroat and consulted on Dollhouse, Chaos and Terra Nova. Before that, the duo was based at ABC Studios where they created and exec produced Reaper and served as showrunners on the CW dramedy for its two-season run. The CW, one of the two primary networks CBS Studios supplies, along with CBS, is now run by Mark Pedowitz who, as president of ABC Studios developed Reaper with Fazekas and Butters and has a great relationship with them. ICM-repped Fazekas and Butters got their start as a writing team on Fox’s Get Real and also worked on NBC’s Ed.

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