ABC Studios


ABC revives Muppets, okays Rhimes drama

ABC kicked off the 2015-16 Upfronts week by ordering six dramas and three comedies, including a Muppets revival. The network also renewed 22 primetime series, and cancelled four others. The Muppets show is being billed as an aged-up documentary-style series in which the puppet characters’ lives are explored in detail. The comedy comes from Bill […]

Netflix UK buys ABC fantasy drama

Netflix has acquired rights for ABC fantasy drama One Upon a Time for the UK and Ireland. The Disney Media Distribution-sold show previously went out in the UK on Channel 5, but the broadcaster did not tale the third season, and Netflix has instead swooped for the first three seasons and the fourth. New episodes […]

CBS plants Criminal Minds spin-off in series

CBS is turning to its trusted backdoor pilot process to test another spin-off series, this time for procedural drama Criminal Minds (pictured). The pilot will be part of Criminal Minds’s latest season, and come in the shape of an episode written by original show showrunner and executive producer Erica Messing. It will follow a separate […]

Fox’s Red Band Society disbanded

Fox’s teen medical drama Red Band Society has been pulled from schedules, prompting questions over its future. The series will drop from air after its tenth episode on December 3, with US broadcaster Fox opting not to order a back nine. Thirteen episodes have filmed so far, and it is unclear when and where the […]

ABC to remake UK’s Wire in the Blood

US broadcast network ABC has called on Endemol Studios to adapt British drama procedural Wire in the Blood for American screens. The UK series (pictured), which ran on ITV for six seasons between 2002 and 2008, is based on a book from Scottish suspense novelist Val McDermid. Endemol Studios and ABC Studios will now coproduce […]

Sky 1 deal shows Intelligence

UK satellite channel Sky 1 has acquired CBS cyber crime drama Intelligence. The show, which ABC Studios creates in association with CBS Television Studios for CBS in the US, will launch in Britain on April 17. Intelligence follows Josh Holloway (Lost) as a futuristic US National Security Agency cyber command specialist who has an implant […]

Disney/ABC chief Sweeney to exit post

Disney/ABC Television Group president and Disney Media Networks co-chair Anne Sweeney is to leave the company to become a TV director. Sweeney, who joined Disney in 1996, will step down in January 2015. The Disney/ABC Television Group includes broadcast channel ABC, cable net ABC Family, kids channel Disney Channel, the Disney Channels Worldwide business and […]

Disney brings on-demand services under ABC Studios banner

Disney is rebranding its on-demand services as part of a wider initiative to have ‘ABC Studios’ as an umbrella brand for its content products and services. Catherine Powell, senior VP, Media Distribution, EMEA at The Walt Disney Company, told TBI that moving forward SVOD platforms that want Disney-distributed content will be sold it as part […]

ABC goes straight-to-series with Secrets & Lies remake

An upcoming Australian crime drama is being remade for US broadcast net ABC, which has made a 10-part, straight-to-series order. Secrets & Lies comes from Oz prodco Hoodlum and is set to begin broadcasting on Network Ten in 2014, and is now being remade by ABC Studios and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment. Hoodlum is also […]

Channel 5 acquires ABC’s Betrayal

UK broadcaster Channel 5 has acquired upcoming ABC scripted series Betrayal from Disney UK & Ireland. The ABC Studios-produced show, set in Chicago, follows a photographer and an attorney who strike up an affair after a chance meeting but find themselves on opposing sides of a murder case. It will launch in the UK this […]