CBS Studios strikes overall deal with Beauty and The Beast pair

Beauty and The Beast writers Sherri Cooper and Jennifer Levin have struck an overall deal with CBS Studios.

This comes ahead of the launch of The CW crime procedural that they will write and executive produce.

Jennifer Levin, who has written on series including Without A Trace, told TBI that she hooked up with Cooper, who has worked on shows including Everwood, after working together on Brothers & Sisters. “We wrote some pilots for CBS last year and had a great experience with them so we signed up to do it again,” she said earlier this year.

Beauty and The Beast is The CW’s attempts to widen its audience and it is hoping to attract more male viewers to the show, which tells the story of detective Catherine Chandler (Kristin Kreuk), who was saved by handsome doctor-turned-injured super soldier Vincent Keller (Jay Ryan).

Levin says they decided to turn Linda Hamilton’s character from a lawyer to a cop. “In the original, she was a lawyer, but it didn’t feel as emotional as cop stories and both of us like cop stories and feel much more comfortable about cop stories. So we made her a cop,” she says.

“It is a cop procedural so there is going to be a case every week. It was always clear that the network was looking for a procedural but we also talked at length about the beast. It’s action packed, there’s chases and he has this military background,” adds Levin.