Warner Bros. Television Is The Big Winner This Pilot Season [Video]

Warner Bros. Movie Group may be licking their wounds when you compare it to the likes of Marvel. However, their counterparts over at the Warner Bros. Television Group will be riding high come this fall. This week each of the networks have been giving their upfronts. For those not in the know, this is where the pilot season draws to a close, and we as fans get to see who’s staying and who is going. We also get to see what new to expect for the upcoming season.

Warner Bros. Television Group walked away with quite the haul this pilot season. First, they are returning 23 shows from last year. That would be good enough, but they also picked up nine brand new shows across the networks. Here is a rundown of the new programming you can expect from Warner Bros. in the fall.

Time After Time (ABC)

Time After Time follows the adventures of the author H.G. Wells as he tries to hunt down the elusive Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper. The twist is he is jumping through time to do it. If this all sounds vaguely familiar to you, it’s because according to Deadline, this is based off a book written by Karl Alexander that was made into a movie by the same name in 1979.

Freddie Stroma (13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi) will play H.G. Wells. Josh Bowman (Revenge) plays the arch nemesis Jack the Ripper. The rest of the major cast members are Genesis Rodriguez (Big Hero 6) and Regina Taylor (The Unit). Kevin Williamson (Vampire Diaries) produced and wrote the pilot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN4C4Ar5BLo

Training Day (CBS)

Keeping with shows with movie tie-ins, Warner Bros. Television is bringing a reimagining of Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day to the small screen. This pilot, which is written and produced by Fuqua, is set 15 years after the events of the movie that earned Denzel Washington the Academy Award.

This version of Training Day has what Variety describes as an idealistic African-American police officer who is appointed to an elite LAPD police squad. He is then teamed with a morally ambiguous Caucasian detective.

Frequency (The CW)

If you thought Warner Bros. was done with time travel or Kevin Williamson, think again. Frequency is also the reimagining of a feature-length film. This is based off of the 2000 film by the same name that starred Jim Caviezel (Person of Interest) and Dennis Quaid (Vegas).

In this version of Frequency, a detective in present day uses a ham radio to contact her father in 1996. As they work on a case together, they soon realize that what they do in the past is having an effect on what is going on in the present. Kevin Williamson is the writer on this one as well.

Riverdale (The CW)

If you have had enough of Warner Bros. Television adapting films, they give us a little in variety by adapting comics. The long-running comic Archie gets a live-action television treatment in the form of Riverdale. Expect all of the old favorites in this one: Archie, Jughead, Betty, and Veronica.

Archie is played by newcomer by K.J. Apa (The Cul De Sac). Jughead Jones is played by Cole Sprouse (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody). The on-again, off-again rivals for Archie’s love, Betty and Veronica, are played by Lili Reinhart (The Kings of Summer) and Camila Mendes respectively.

Powerless (NBC)

Warner Bros. Television stays in the world of comics. This time they tap into the DC Universe with the show Powerless starring Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical). Hudgens plays an insurance adjuster who has to deal with the collateral damage caused by a world inhabited by superheroes. This seems to be the only lighter side of the DC Universe that will make its way to television this fall.

The final four shows picked up by the networks from Warner Bros. Television include First Dates, a reality-based look at first dates of people from all walks of life.

The movie Lethal Weapon gets its own television series.

Trial and Error was picked up by NBC. It revolves around a New York lawyer that makes his way to a small town to argue his first major case.

The final show from Warner Bros. Television is No Tomorrow. No Tomorrow is a CW romantic comedy about a straight-laced female procurement manager who falls for a guy who believes the end of the world is inevitable.

Warner Bros. Television’s series this year lean heavily on properties that have been done before, but for the most part, all of the properties mentioned have been successful. Networks are counting on that success to win over viewers in an age of television that has seen the traditional networks losing patrons at an alarming rate to cable and streaming services.

What do you think of the Warner Bros. Television line-up? Do any of these shows interest you. Let us know.

[Image via Warner Bros. Television]