King's 'Under the Dome' resurfaces as CBS summer series for 2013

When you’re Steven Spielberg and Stephen King and you decide to work on a project together, the odds are a lot of people will listen. Back in 2011, Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment brought King’s mega-best-selling novel Under the Dome to Showtime (Spielberg had acquired the rights shortly after the book was released in 2009). According to Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva, while Showtime entertainment president David Nevins liked the concept when they acquired it, he felt it “was not right for Showtime.” So the project went into turnaround. Still, Spielberg believed in the book so much, he asked Showtime to release the book so it could be shopped to other networks. But in a surprise corporate synergy move, Nevins passed the project to his counterpart over at CBS, Nina Tassler, who was interested. And in another surprise move, CBS will launch a 13 episode series (no pilot, went right to series) of the book next summer, to be teamed up with the returning procedural Unforgettable, which was cancelled last May, but was quickly renewed for a 13 episode season that CBS said would air in the summer of 2013. 

There is always a risk producing original scripted fare for the off-season, and CBS has always done well with reality based shows. But the broadcast networks have seen some success with a few scripted shows -ABC’s Rookie Blue is a good example- and obviously has faith that this could work. Under the Dome is about a town that is suddenly surrounded by an invisible force field, and the people inside must do almost anything to survive. But things go from bad to worse rather quickly, with the dome's ecological effects on the town and the maneuvering of one Big Jim Rennie, an deviling local politician and drug lord who quickly realizes he can now make Chester Mill’s his own little private kingdom, with himself as absolute ruler. The heroes include Iraq veteran Dale “Barbie” Barbara, newspaper editor Julia Shumway, a group of skateboarders and many others. Deadline also reports that “writer Brian K. Vaughan (Lost) kept the general conceit and many of the characters from the book but also introduced new characters as regulars and tweaked some details and backstory for the existing ones. I hear King has blessed all the changes.” Deadline adds: “As for the book’s much-talked-about ending, which has divided King fans, I hear the series won’t follow it, and as in success, CBS would like to do another season.” In the meantime, Niels Arden Oplev, who helmed the original The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, will direct the first episode (and I’m sure it’s a mere coincidences that Oplev also helmed the pilot for Unforgettable, which had a large fanbase, and did well for CBS, but got lost in all the networks other procedurals? CBS sort of admitted they liked the series, but with real estate so tight on their schedule –oddly filled with aging and expensive franchises that had similar ideas- they pulled the plug. Two months later, in June of 2012, they announced that it would return in a 13 episode run in the summer of 2013).