'Nancy Drew' TV Show In the Works at The CW

The CW handed out several pilot orders earlier this week, including one for a new Nancy Drew TV Series from the creators of The O.C.

The untitled Nancy Drew series will be written and executive produced by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage under their Fake Empire banner, with The Magicians' Noga Landau joining to co-write, reports The Hollywood Reporter. Liz Wowinski will co-executive produce.

The series will center on an 18-year-old Nancy Drew, beginning after her high school graduation. Instead of leaving for college, a family tragedy keeps her in her hometown another year. Nancy finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation while also doing some digging into town secrets herself.

CBS Television Studios is the studio on the project. The studio has tried to launch a Nancy Drew-inspired series in the past. Sarah Shahi (Fairly Legal, Person of Interest) starred in a 2016 pilot that CBS ultimately passed on. Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, who worked on the Shahi project, also wrote another pilot set up at NBC last season that never moved forward.

Schwartz and Savage have a long history with The CW, which aired their hit Gossip Girl and currently, their Dynasty reboot. Schwartz and Savage also developed Hulu's Runaways, based on the Marvel comics.

Nancy Drew debuted in Edward Stratemeyer's Hardy Boys books in 1930 and has been in the cultural zeitgeist ever since. There have been several film and television adaptations going back to the late 1930s. In 2007, Emma Roberts played the character in Nancy Drew, which was not a hit.

Ellen DeGeneres is a producer on the latest Nancy Drew movie, Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, with Sophia Lillis (It, Sharp Objects) in the title role. A trailer for the film was released last week. The film, directed by Katt Shea, opens on March 15.

The CW was aggressively ordering pilots this week to make up for the upcoming ends of Jane the Virgin, iZombie and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The network has already ordered a pilot for the DC Comics series Batwoman, which spun out of December's Arrow-verse crossover.

The CW ordered Jane the Novela, a spin-off series from Jane the Virgin that dramatizes novels "written by" Gina Rodriguez's title character. The first season will center on a family that runs a Napa Valley vineyard, with Rodriguez narrating.

Riverdale is also getting another spin-off. Katy Keene centers on the titular Archie Comics character. Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is also part of the Riverdale franchise.

The CW also revived a long-gestating attempt to make a series based on the 1987 film The Lost Boys. The new version will be developed by iZombie's Rob Thomas and centers on two brothers who move to Santa Carla with their mother. Their hopes of starting a new life in the town where their mother grew up are dashed when they learn about the young vampires there.

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