Nellie Andreeva

Fox is a step closer to getting an aircraft drama series on the air with a pilot order to Wild Blue, from writer Taylor Elmore, producers Graham Yost and Mark Johnson and director Michael Dinner. Fox also has greenlighted cop drama pilot Gang Related, from feature writer Chris Morgan (Fast Five), with Scott Rosenbaum and Imagine TV. This brings the number of Fox drama pilots to eight as the network appears to be done on the hour side.

The Sony Pictures TV-produced Wild Blue (formerly The Bridge) is described as an upstairs/downstairs look at pressure-cooker lives of the U.S. Navy. It is a young ensemble about the working men and women on board an aircraft carrier equipped with a 500-foot landing strip, a nuclear reactor and 6000 souls on board. Fox originally put the project in development last year with Justified writer-producer Elmore writing and Johnson producing. It didn’t go to pilot, but the network kept it in contention, rolling in to this season. Then in August, Fox bought a second upstairs/downstairs drama set at an aircraft carrier from House executive producers Russel Friend & Garrett Lerner and 20th TV. In October, Justified executive producers Yost and Dinner boarded Wild Blue to help Elmore with the rewrite and give the project extra clout. It worked, and Wild Blue landed a pilot order. Yost, Johnson and Dinner executive produce, with Elmore and Melissa Bernstain co-executive producing. Dinner is directing. Yost and Dinner are with CAA; Elmore is with UTA.

Morgan’s Gang Related, from 20th Century Fox TV, centers on a gang member who is sent in to infiltrate the San Francisco Police Department and rises through its ranks but must balance his obligations to his crime family with an increasing sense of loyalty to his new “family” — the SFPD’s Gang Task Force. Morgan’s script had been on the short list for pickup for a while. It clinched the pilot order after Scott Rosenbaum (V, Chuck) was recently brought in as showrunner. Also joining the pilot is Imagine TV. Morgan, Rosenbaum, Brian Grazer and Francie Calfo executive produce. This marks the second pilot for ICM Partners’ Morgan, who also executive produces ABC’s Thunder Mountain, based on Disney’s Big Thunder Mountain ride.

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