There’s been a flurry of new pilot announcements over the last week, and per usual, networks are building their shows around big stars, grabbing some of the more profile free agents in the hopes that a huge star name will bring big audiences. (As we’ve seen in the past, this backfires as often as it succeeds). Let’s take a quick look at six new pilot announcements, ranked by the current star power of their leads.
1. Alyson Hannigan — Hannigan looks to jump from How I Met Your Mother to another CBS sitcom, More Time with Family, “a multi-cam comedy that centers on a husband and father making a career change to spend more time with his clan.” Tom Papa will play the father/husband. (TVLine)
2. Mary Louise-Parker — Parker is circling Feed Me, an NBC single-camera comedy pilot described as an “exploration of adult intimacy and desire that centers on a dysfunctional family bound by love and the restaurant they run together. When daughter Emma’s husband has an affair, they circle the wagons to fiercely protect one of their own.” (Variety)
3. Jane Krakowski — Krakowski is eying the NBC sitcom pilot, Dead Boss, an adaptation of a British comedy about “overachiever Helen Stephens wrongfully convicted of murdering her boss and forced to rely on her train wreck of a sister to prove her innocence.” (TVLine)
4. Octavia Spencer — Spencer landed the lead in Fox’s Red Band Society, a soap about a group of teenagers who meet as patients in the children’s wing of a hospital and become unlikely allies and friends. Spencer will played the hard-nosed nurse at the hospital. (EW)
5. Michael Imperioli — Imperioli has been cast in the ABC pilot, Saint Francis, which centers on “Francis Quinlan (Imperioli), a blue-collar, no-nonsense Long Island cop and family man who butts heads with the modern, liberal world when his 29-year-old sister gets pregnant out of wedlock.” (Deadline)
6. Neve Campbell/Elisabeth Rohm — The two will play the leads in the TNT drama pilot Guilt By Association, which “centers on a gutsy Deputy District Attorney in the Special Trials Unit of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office (Campbell_ who works closely with tough-as-nails female LAPD detective Bailey Keller (Rohm) and stylish female prosecutor Toni LaCollette (Rose Rollins), both of whom routinely crash at Rachel’s Elisabeth Rohm’s place.” (Deadline)
