Nellie Andreeva
EXCLUSIVE: Fox has bought a CIA drama from Karyn Usher (The Playboy Club) in a script deal that has a significant penalty attached to it. The project, a procedural thriller centered on the orphaned 17-year-old daughter of a CIA operative who is recruited to become an operative herself, is being produced by 20th Century Fox TV and Mary Adelstein and Shawn Levy’s studio-based 21 Laps/Adelstein Prods. Usher, Adelstein, Levy and Becky Clements are executive producing. Adelstein approached Usher, who also is under an overall deal at 20th TV, with the idea for the project to find out that she had been thinking about a similar idea. This is the duo’s third project together. Adelstein first met Usher on the Fox/20th TV drama Prison Break, which Adelstein executive produced and on which WME-repped Usher started off as a co-producer and eventually rose to co-executive producer. The two later developed a U.S. version of the British format Daylight Robbery. 21 Laps/Adelstein, which has the Tim Allen ABC comedy Last Man Standing launching next month, has already sold a slew of projects this season. They include a Romancing the Stone adaptation penned by Mark Friedman to NBC, a medical dramedy written by Jessica Queller, ensemble comedy Gorilla Time penned by Stacy Traub & Hayes Jackson and family comedy Threepete written by Carter Covington to Fox.

TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.