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EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation with two networks bidding, NBC has landed Cleopatra, a period drama about the famous Egyptian queen produced by Di Bonaventura Pictures TV and ABC Studios. The project will be written by Michael Seitzman who penned the ABC/ABC Studios drama pilot Americana this past season. Seitzman is executive producing with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and Dan McDermott.
Cleopatra is one of the most popular figures in ancient history. The last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, she is known mostly for her beauty and her liaisons with Rome’s Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and her tragic suicide that was followed by the fall of Egypt, which became a Roman province. The NBC project is described as an epic romance set in a world of sorcery, gods and monsters that centers on Cleopatra, Mark Antony and Julius Caesar. The young queen makes a sacred pact with a goddess to win back her throne, igniting a curse and an infamous love triangle that changes the course of history, forever ending the 4,000 year dominion of the Pharaoh.
There have been numerous screen adaptations of the story of Cleopatra, most notably the 1963 movie starring Elizabeth Taylor. There is also a high-profile new Cleopatra movie percolating at Sony, with David Fincher attached to direct, Angelina Jolie to star and Scott Rudin to produce. Surprisingly, there have not been major Cleopatra-centered series projects I can think of… until now. (Cleopatra was recently featured as a peripheral character on HBO’s Rome.)
Cleopatra stems from WME-repped Seitzman’s overall deal with ABC Studios where the North Country writer has been since 2008. His pilot Americana last season attracted Phillip Noyce as director and Anthony LaPaglia as star and came very close to a series order. CAA-repped Di Bonaventura Pictures TV also is under an overall deal at ABC Studios. In its first season, the company landed a series on the air, ABC’s upcoming Zero Hour. In addition to Cleopatra, the pod recently sold the Texas militia drama pitch Founding Fathers to ABC with Rich D’Ovidio writing.
This marks ABC Studios’ first major sale outside of ABC this development season. Cleopatra joins several other projects that have received put pilot/pilot production commitments so far: Alex Kurtzman/Bob Orci/Len Wiseman’s Sleepy Hollow at Fox, a McG/Byron Balasco soap at ABC, a Rand Ravich drama at NBC and Hart Hanson’s Backstrom at CBS.
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We were going along so well until we got to the NBC part.
Get Steve Martin to do a dance cameo
and I’ll check it out.
Sorry, hes part of the King Tut flashback scenes-Tut was long gone by the time Cleo was slutting it around the Nile! I wonder if she had a condo made of Stone-ah!
This is Hollywood. Tut and Cleo will be besties.
So, he will be born in Arizona, too?
My thoughts exactly, Dee123. Glad you got the first comment!
I would prefer that is be a “historical drama” rather than an “historical fantasy” project, but I will check it out if it ever makes it to TV.
Good idea. Hope it moves forward.
What the F@&#!
This has “Boring” written all over it!
Cleopatra… one of the most famous Egyptian women in history… written by a white male, produced by two more white males… were there no women or Middle Eastern writers out there to be considered?
You make it sound like NBC said “We want a Cleopatra show!” then hired white men to make it. It doesn’t work that way. NBC hired the people who BROUGHT THEM an idea they like. Women want to get hired? People of colour want to get hired? Then let them bring the networks ideas that the networks like enough to want to buy.
@MoreTears–Yes, all of those studies regarding the lack of gender and racial parity in Hollywood television and film making is all BS—if only they would WORK HARDER then there would be no problem.
You’re brilliant.
Just because the truth sucks doesn’t mean MoreTears is wrong. Just because you are white, male or privileged somehow, doesn’t mean that a “good idea” is undeserving. As the saying goes, don’t blame the player; blame the game. The inference of course is, get in the game, whatever your handicap. And that is happening more and more.
You were making sense until you stated “good idea”… This will only work on HBO or Showtime. NBC will do nothing good with this idea…
Ella is correct. You guys sound like the Klan in South Caroline when they blamed blacks for the reason they were paid less and got less work or less opportunity.
Without access you can’t get great ideas out there. White men have more access. Access creates relationships at agencies, studios, networks. And if you have good ideas with access you get work.
Misogyny is uncool. You guys sound like gamers.
I didn’t say or even imply women and minorities don’t work hard enough. I replied to Elia’s question about why women and minorities weren’t hired to do a show that three white men pitched to NBC — why the intellectual property of three white men wasn’t taken away from them and handed to others. If you can’t be bothered to deal with what I actually say, keep quiet.
The first choice for networks/studios/prod-cos are white males. That is a fact. Even when white males bring bad ideas (and we can all attest to the many bad ideas) they are more inclined to selling. Minorities/women DO NOT get the opportunities that white male creators get. Regarding minorities/women creating ideas/pitches/pilots, the saying “If you make it, they will come” needs an addendum; “If you make it, they will come IF you are white & male.”
Dude. MoreTears. Seriously. Time to wake up now.
For all you idiots claming Cleopatra was a greek or anything other than black… your true educational level is showing. Please go back to high-school AND then PLEASE take a college course on African Diaspora or even Historical Geography. Egypt is IN Africa and every queen or king of Africa has been black. That’s history, not the some made up MGM/Liz Taylor bullshi*.
Cleopatra was a Ptolomy, and was descended from one of Alexander the Great’s generals. She had primarily Greek heritage, not Egyptian. She was not African, and not even semitic middle-eastern. She was European.
Jace,
Arsinoe and Cleopatra, who are sisters, had an African mother. The recent 2011 archaeological and scientific finds of Arsinoe’s sub-saharan African heritage attest to this. They have a father from Ptolemy, who was a Macedonian general, but are indeed half-black. The entire country of Egypt was “breeded out” with interracial unions, but initially all of it was African/Black like the majority of Africa. Duh.
Sorry to piss on your theory that only Robert DeNiro had sex with black women, but it was a fairly common practice from the invaders. Cleopatra is black.
Elia, if you spent as much time writing and honing your craft as you do bitching on deadline you might actually have a career.
Cleopatra was Egyption, a race who is extinct, the current people of Egypt are of Arab tribes decent, and have nothing to do with the ancient Egyptions.
Would you like them to use DNA strands from mummies and resurrect one, just so you can be satisfied?
This is nonsense. The genetic makeup of the people of Egypt includes strands that go back to Pharaonic times, as well as many others. There is a strong sense of historical and cultural continuity among the people there as well. Please keep your ignorance in check.
I’m not paid by Arab oil to distort the truth, so I have no intention of changing the truth to fit you. The only “cultural continuity” is their love of dictators.
Actually, she was Greek as she was the last of the Ptolomy’s, a ruling family established by one of Alexander the Great’s generals. She had no, or little, Egyptian blood. Although she spoke Egyptian, she was the first of her family to do so. She was an incredibly accomplished woman, and if you’re interested in her life you should read Stacy Schiff’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of her (and not that silly Liz Taylor monstrosity).
For what it’s worth, Cleopatra was Greek.
yes, she was Greek and that was alluded to during the shipboard banquet scene in Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra when she compliments Anthony’s tunic….his reply “It’s in the Greek Fashion” and she says something to the effect “So am I”.
Cleopatra was the daughter of King Ptolemy VI. there were from Macedonia and appeared most likely as anyone you see in Greece today. Not middle eastern.
Why do i have this idea that the series spoken about will be nothing more than modern day people pretending to be olden day people and we notice that. It distracting and annoying. You can only hope for the best only so far. Please…..let it reflect some research.
Hmmm. No cops. No fairy tale characters. Not a remake of a bad 80s show. No tortured/eccentric/crazed detectives.
Hell, it sounds like it could be pretty cool. Especially if it goes the Rome route. Most encouraging thing I’ve read all week.
Except NBC tried historical concepts in the late 2000′s. Remember, Crusoe? Kings? No one watched.
Yes, Crusoe and Kings were absolute garbage, BUT I think the head of development was sacked shortly after. The concepts were pretty cool, but the attack was bland and substandard.
Great ideas can be killed by a pisspoor development team. Part of making a show work is allowing it to breathe.
Crusoe was decent enough, especially as a “family show,” and Kings was quite outstanding, but was clearly never going to be recognized as the high-quality piece of work it was by more than a small minority.
Rome was on HBO, this is NBC, don’t get your hopes up.
This sounds like a huge bore. THey are not going to get the 20 year old male to watch this
Great! Sounds very cool. Dan and Lorenzo are the best.
PLEASE NO BRITISH ACCENT. I’m beggin here…
I can not tell you how deeply I agree. Why is the past always British? Why???
The “past is always British” because they ENUNCIATE WORDS and know how to act, and don’t talk in an American mish-mash of grunts, cliches, slang talk and rap lyrics.
AMEN! Who decided that everyone in the whole world who lived before the 18th C needs to have a British accent, to convey the idea of oldness? It’s incredibly distracting! If the producers think they need to give the characters some kind of accent, just make something exotic. They spoke languages that are now dead anyway so whatever accent they had, no longer exists in the world, and no one can say its “wrong.”
1). Cleopatra was not famous for her beauty, she was famous for being alluring in spite of her lack of beauty.
2). There was no love triangle, Caesar having been dead for quite some time before Cleopatra began her affair with Antony.
This promises to be a real dog. What else can be expected with NBC in the mix?
Actually she was famous for being a brilliant strategist (for a woman) AND for being alluring.
1) Wasn’t this project supposed to be a movie with Angelina Jolie like one year ago? Weren’t they even courting Fincher?
2) Cleopatra in television/long-form has already been done by HBO’s Rome. While she wasn’t the central focus, haven’t the networks learned not to try and outdo the premium channels in their niches?
A Game of Thrones style drama set in ancient Egypt could be very interesting… but not on NBC or any other major network.
Does this has to be changed into drama, i mean history books aint enough?
All the young people will want to watch this! So excited and Michael Seitzman has an amazing track record!
… Of writing cliched, two-dimensional pilots, and getting Patrick Moran to keep writing checks? You betcha!
You must be someone Seitzman turned down. Americana was the best pilot of the year. Period.
Needs to be on HBO
always interested to see what new concepts NBC can ruin next! Let me pull up a chair!
It needs a twist something like she was really the first Bionic Woman in history and her chariot was actually an early version of Knight Rider. Remember this is for NBC so just adding ancient gods and monsters won’t be enough. They should also make Cleopatra an ancient version of Wonder Woman this way they get to use scripts from three shows that didn’t work out so well.
Can someone please ensure that Cleopatra is NOT a white woman? Please remind them daily with chants “Cleopatra is not white!!!!!!”
Hey, sistah gurl-Cleopatra WAS a white woman-she was NOT one of the ancient Egyptians, but rather, from Greek heritage, and that was at a time when Greeks WERE Greeks-blonde, blue-eyed, light skinned peoples of the rest of Europe-NOT darker versions of their former selves, after the Moops came in and took over and changed the races of Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, etc.
Strictly speaking, she also had Parthian ancestry (before the family became all about marrying each other), so she should look a bit Arab-ish.
Arabs are not a race, they are a group of people from a particular area of the world like Latins/Hispanics. They do fall under one of the 3 major races of man. You have to ask an Arab what they consider themselves and if they claim Cleopatra.
@bigb…
No one knows the identity of Cleopatra’s mother, so you cannot say with any certainty that she was white because we only know the identity of one parent.
For this to be any good it should be on a premium cable channel/ or even history channel. And a lot will hinge on who plays her. But once I hear NBC thats a turn off- probably be bad
I’m guessing they are going to hire a Caucasian actress to portray her, considering this is NBC.
They should hire an actress of Greek ancestry, to match Cleo’s ethnicity. everyone knows she wasn’t ethnically Egyptian, right? She was descended from Ptolemy, who was Alexander the Great’s general. Alex gave Egypt to Ptolemy to rule after conquering it.
Given Cleopatra was more caucasian than semitic, then there’s no problem hiring a white actress for the role. Certainly, she was not African.
So basically they’re taking a generic fantasy story and sticking a famous name from history on it. Great. The sad thing is that Cleopatra’s real story is actually fascinating.
David Fincher is absolutely not attached to direct the Cleopatra movie at Sony.
Rudin made some comment that he’d “love to have David direct” but def not happening…
especially considering how sour
things were between Fincher/Rudin and the studio after the Tattoo film…
No one watches NBC now except for Olympics so they really have nothing to lose. It sounds better then another shitty procedural or what NBC considers comedies with ego-centric stars who think they’re actually clever or amusing.