Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: This past summer, Lifetime picked up Devious Maids, Marc Cherry’s follow-up to Desperate Housewives. Now the cable network has added to its development slate Paranormal Housewives, a light drama executive produced by Julia Roberts, her longtime collaborator Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas as well as Robyn Meisinger of Madhouse Entertainment. Written/exec produced by Miss Congeniality scribe Katie Ford, it is about an all-female group of paranormal investigators who call themselves The Paranormal Housewives. The show is inspired by the real Paranormal Housewives, a Southern California group of female professional paranormal investigators. It was launched in 2010 by Erin Potter and her friends Kirsten Thorne and Marsha Covert-Garcia in part as a response to their field being dominated by male investigators.

Potter, Thorne and Covert-Garcia will serve as consultants on the Lifetime series, which is  produced by ABC Studios, Roberts’ Red Om Films and 3 Arts, where Goldsmith-Thomas is a manager-producer. Om principals Lisa Gillan and Marissa Yeres Gill serve as producers, along with German Michael Torres of GMT Films, which has a deal with the Paranormal Housewives group, and Rick Telles.

This is the second sale for Roberts, Goldsmith-Thomas and ABC Studios, who recently set up workplace comedy Taming Of The Shrew at ABC with Marc Hyman writing. Paranormal Housewives brings Ford back to Lifetime, where she wrote the Emmy-nominated 2009 telefilm Prayers For Bobby starring Sigourney Weaver.

TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.