Fox’s Pilots First to Fly

TV dramas spun off the movies The Exorcist and Lethal Weapon are among the first pilots to be picked up as series for the 2016/17 season in the US.

The latter stars Clayne Crawford and Damon Wayans Sr in the Mel Gibson-Danny Glover odd-couple cop roles that spawned four blockbusters.

Being a Warner Bros TV production, it will screen here on TV2 as part of TVNZ’s output deal with the distributor.

The Exorcist, which stars Alfonso Herrera, Ben Daniels and Geena Davis, is a 20th Century Fox production, which means it probably will wind up on TVNZ as well following the deals it’s done for Empire, The X-Files and The Simpsons.

It’s described as a serialised psychological thriller following two very different men tackling one family’s case of horrifying demonic possession and confronting the face of true evil.

Fox TV’s also picked up the dramas A.P.B. and Pitch and the comedies Making History and The Mick —  in addition to straight-to-series orders for Shots Fired, Prison Break, 24: Legacy and Son of Zorn.

A.P.B. concerns a tech billionaire who buys a troubled police precinct, Pitch is about the first woman to play in major league baseball, Making History plays time travel for laughs and The Mick is a fish-out-of-water comedy about a hard-living woman who moves to a flash neighbourhood to raise her fugitive sister’s rich kids.

For more details, see trade paper coverage in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline Hollywood.