FOX Announces Its Slate for 2014-2015

FOX has announced its final lineup for the 2014-2014 primetime series. Included among the new series are genre treats like Gotham, crime thrillers like Gracepoint (based on ITV’s British drama Broadchurch), comedies and more. The FOX autumn slate offers a couple of intriguing series:

Gotham

Gotham explores the origin stories of some of the most iconic DC comic book characters: the super-villains and their pursuers. Created by Bruno Heller (The Mentalist, Rome), the series stars Ben McKenzie (Southland, The O.C.) as Detective James Gordon, Jada Pinkett Smith (Hawthorne, Collateral) as James Moody, and Vikings Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock. The series focuses on a lone cop in a nasty city (Gotham City of course) in the days before the emergence of a certain caped vigilante crusader. McKenzie has this to say about the new series ““The way that this show is going to stand out from everything else that’s on television is both in its scope and in its depth. You’re taking the biggest canvas you could possibly paint on, the world of Gotham and DC [Comics].”

 

Gracepoint

A 10-episode limited series, Gracepoint is based on Britain’s Broadchurch. Like it’s UK counterpart, Gracepoint stars David Tennant, and tracks the mystery of a young boy’s murder. Quiet lives in a peaceful seaside town are torn apart during the hunt for the killer, made even more chaotic as the media descend in what will become a frenzy of a national news story. The series also stars Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad), Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook), Nick Nolte, and Michael Pena (American Hustle). I’m not quite certain why a U.S. version of Broadchurch is necessary (the series is returning to the UK’s ITV for a second season), but I’m intrigued about how the series will differ even as both series have the benefit of the fabulous Tennant (Doctor Who).

Anna Gunn, playing Ellie Miller (her name has been preserved from Broadchurch; Tennant’s character Emmet is different than his character in the British series) has this to say about the new FOX series: “Gracepoint centers on the tragic death of a young boy and the impact it has on a small town.  It focuses on that and how the small town deals with that tragedy, and also what it uncovers, I think, about the people and the town and how each individual person deals with it in their own way, and then how they overlap and how they meld and mesh together in that story.”

During the back half of the season, FOX offers several new series, including:

Empire

Set in the unpredictable, chaotic world of the music industry, Empire, created by Lee Daniels (The Butler, Precious) and Danny Strong (Game Change, The Butler), focuses a music…empire. It’s a “sexy, powerful” drama, according to FOX that follows the ex-wife and sons of a music industry king as they “battle for his throne.” Starring Terrence Howard (Crash, Hustle and Flow) and Taraji P. Henson (Person of Interest), the series is set to a hip hop soundtrack created by Timberland.

 Wayward Pines

M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) brings to the small screen this 10-part limited series based on the best-selling novel. Starring Matt Dillon, the series tells the story of a secret service agent who comes to Wayward Pines, Idaho to find two missing federal agents. But as he gets deeper and deeper into his investigation and closer to the truth of what happened, he is also drawn further into a labyrinth from which he may never emerge. The series stars Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Terrence Howard (Crash), and Carla Gugino (Entourage).

Also on the FOX slate for later in the season are sci-fi comedy The Last Man on Earth, created by Chris Miller and Paul Lord, friends comedy Weird Loners from Michael J. Weithorn (The King of Queens) and director Jake Kasdan (New Girl), and animated comedy Bordertown from Mark Hentemann and Seth MacFarlane.

 

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