Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: Former Homicide executive producers Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson are back on the beat, this time at the CW. The network has bought Musketeers 3.0, a cop drama project which will be written by Fontana and executive produced by him and Levinson. It centers on three outstanding but out-of-control New York detectives who meet their match when a sexy, young rookie is assigned to their team. Levinson and Fontana’s banner The Levinson/Fontana Co. is producing with Warner Bros. TV. Rookie cops are popular on TV these days — ABC has Rookie Blue and CBS is launching The 2-2 in midseason.

Developing procedurals, which have better repeatability, has been one of the goals of new CW president Mark Pedowitz going into this season. The CW had been looking to crack the classic legal, medical and cop franchises for the past couple of years. This past season, the network greenlighted to pilot the cop drama Cooper & Stone and soapy medical drama Heart of Dixie, the latter of which was picked up to series for fall. Along with procedurlas, half-hour comedies and DC-themed comic book adaptations are among CW’s development priorities this season. The network is already working on both, buying Eric Kripke’s adaptation of the comic Deadman and redeveloping as a half-hour Todd Graff’s summer camp dramedy Acting Out. Levinson and Fontana have a history at CW’s predecessor the WB. The two produced the short-lived 2006 college drama The Bedford Diaries, which was co-created by Fontana. UTA-repped Fontana recently co-created the BBC America’s upcoming first original scripted series, drama Copper. ICM-repped Levinson, who recently directed HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack, is attached to another biopic at the pay cable network, The Day the Laughter Stopped, about silent-film star Fatty Arbuckle. John Adams writer Kirk Ellis is writing, with Modern Family star Eric Stonestreet on board to portray Arbuckle.

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