The project marks Aronofsky's first foray into TV. He has previously directed the films Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain. AMC recently moved into original programming with the critically acclaimed Mad Men and Breaking Bad, about a high school teacher who turns to a life of crime.
In other news, Lost executive producer Jeff Pinkner is joining the new sci-fi series from long-time colleague JJ Abrams. Abrams, who created Lost and previously worked with Pinkner on Alias, is now making a two-hour pilot and 13-part series of Fringe.
The X-Files and Paddy Chayefsky's Altered States with what Abrams calls "a slight Twilight Zone vibe." It will focus on brilliant but possibly crazy research scientist Walter Bishop, his estranged son and a female FBI agent who brings them together. Episodes will explore self-contained mysteries of the paranormal, as well as the relationships between the three leads. "So much of the story is relatable people in extraordinary situations," Abrams said. "The show is definitely a nod to Altered States and Scanners and that whole Michael Crichton/Robin Cook world of medicine and science."
There'll also be an overriding mythology that will come into play from time to time, as well as a healthy dose of humor. "It does the stuff my favourite TV shows and movies do, which is to combine genres that shouldn't fit together," Abrams said. "It's definitely meant to scare the hell out of you, but it's also meant to make you laugh... It pushes all the buttons of things we loved from our childhood." Driving the show will be the Walter Bishop character, a larger-than-life figure who bears some resemblance to the titular character in Fox's House. In the pilot, he's in a mental hospital. "Imagine that your father is Frankenstein mixed with Albert Einstein," Orci said. "He's someone who has the mental ability to solve so many problems but is so different that communicating with them is almost impossible.
Pinkner will be executive producer and showrunner on the project, which follows young FBI agent Olivia Warren and two others as they "confront the spread of unexplained phenomena". The show will star Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek) and is expected to air on Fox in the US from September.
Battlestar Galactica star Tricia Helfer has also signed up to a deal with Fox. The talent holding agreement will see her appear in a series for the network, probably a drama, though she has yet to be cast to a particular project.Marcia Shulman, Fox's head of casting, said she first saw Helfer in Battlestar and last year gave her a role in drama pilot Them. "After we saw the pilot, we were wowed by her," she said. Shulman also praised the actress's performance in movie Walk All Over Me: "She had a pretty remarkable range, she showed vulnerability and strength. She is a star."
Emmy winners Joe and Anthony Russo will direct the Fox drama pilot Courtroom K, Richard Shepard is set to helm ABC's single-camera comedy pilot Bad Mother's Handbook and Dean Parisot will direct ABC's untitled Dave Hemingson drama pilot.
Courtroom K, from 20th TV and Paul Attanasio, is a darkly comedic courtroom drama set in a Milwaukee Superior Court. The Russo brothers won an Emmy for directing the pilot episode of Arrested Development, also for Fox/20th TV. They also were tapped by Fox's entertainment chief Kevin Reilly, then at FX, to helm the pilot for the cable network's comedy pilot Lucky.
Handbook, from ABC Studios, centres on a 32-year-old woman too busy taking care of her 16-year-old daughter and 48-year-old mother. Shepard, who recently directed the film The Hunting Party, also helmed the Ugly Betty pilot for ABC/ABC Studios.
The Hemingson project, from 20th TV, is a legal ensemble dramedy about a newly minted law school grad from a blue-collar background who joins an outrageous Los Angeles boutique law firm. Parisot also directed the pilots for USA's Monk and ABC's The Job.
