eOne and WGN America Developing Period Drama ‘Shadow Land”

By Lesley Goldberg for The Hollywood Reporter

WGN America and eOne are teaming for a period drama. The cable network has picked up a script for Shadow Land from Entertainment One, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Shadow Land is set in feudal Japan during the 1820s and chronicles the conflicts that arise from the Wild West-style trading post of Dejima, a samurai-guarded island in Nagasaki Bay, which for 200 years was home to the only Americans and Europeans permitted contact with the Japanese.  Stuart Max Perelmuter (2003’s Fake ID) will pen the script based on an original concept by eOne’s Harrison Reishman.  The project will be produced in-house at eOne.  Slated to executive produce are eOne CEO John Morayniss and Executive Vice President U.S. scripted Television Michael Rosenberg.

For WGN America, Shadow Land comes as the cabler continues its push into original scripted drama under newly installed president Matt Cherniss. WGN has already picked up two scripted dramas with straight-to-series 13-episode orders: Brannon Braga’s Salem and Sam Shaw’s Manhattan. The former hails from 20th Century Fox Television, while the latter is from WGN’s recently established Tribune Studios and Skydance Television.

At eOne, the drama continues the group’s big week, after setting up Canadian comedy Seed at The CW, marking the youth-skewing network’s return to scripted comedy.  Should Shadow Land move to series, it would join eOne’s U.S. lineup, which includes ABC’s Rookie Blue, AMC’s Hell on Wheels, DirecTV’s Rogue, Syfy’s Haven and Discovery’s upcoming first original scripted miniseries Klondike.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article in The Hollywood Reporter.