Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: ABC has bought a drama from feature writer Karen Croner and Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s Fake Empire. The untitled project is based on Croner’s experience of growing up in the Hollywood Hills and is described as a contemporary dramedy soap about a woman returning with her teenage son to live with her rock-n-roll family in Laurel Canyon. Croner, Schwartz, Savage and Len Goldstein executive produce for Warner Bros TV and studio-based Fake Empire. Croner wrote upcoming Universal feature comedy Admission, directed by Paul Weitz and starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd.

This marks the sixth sale for Fake Empire so far this development season. The shingle has supernatural drama Copeland Prep at the CW and two projects at Fox: family comedy Losing Our Cool from Shauna Cross and an adaptation of Scott Westerfeld’s Midnighters book series, which will be written by Chuck co-creator Chris Fedak. Additionally, Fake Empire has two projects at ABC: Wrongful Death, from Hart Of Dixie’s Donald Todd, and an untitled legal drama that Schwartz and Chuck’s Matthew Miller will write and executive produce. The shingle’s first feature Fun Size, which Schwartz directed, opens October 26.

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