The CW Teams With J.J. Abrams & OTH Creator Mark Schwahn For Hotel Drama

EXCLUSIVE: J.J. Abrams is headed towards the CW. In the first stint in the 5-year-old network, the very best author-producer-director has partnered with Mark Schwahn, creator/executive producer/showrunner from the CW’s lengthy-running drama One Tree Hill. The energy pair has offered expensive hotels drama towards the CW, that will instantly become among the the network’s greatest-profile projects this development season. Schwahn will write the show, tentatively entitled Maine, that is set in an motel in Maine and involves employees and also the motel’s visitors. Abrams and Schwahn will executive produce with Bryan Burk for Warner Bros. TV, Abrams’ studio-based Bad Robot and Schwahn’s Mastermind Labs. In scope, the smoothness-based drama, that has received a script commitment, harks to Schwahn’s OTH, that will finish its nine-year run early the coming year, and Abrams’ Felicity. This marks a homecoming of sorts for Abrams who began his TV career around the CW predecessor the WB with Felicity. For Schwahn, the project comes from a script cope with WBTV. The offer reunites Abrams using the CW leader Mark Pedowitz and EVP development Thom Sherman who labored with Abrams at ABC and ABC Galleries. Most lately, Pedowitz was leader of ABC Galleries where Abrams was under a general deal before moving to WBTV in 2006, and Sherman went Abrams’ production company Bad Robot for just two years before joining the CW, also in 2006. When the project would go to series, it'll make for any seamless transition for WME-repped Schwahn, who's wrapping the ninth and final season of 1 Tree Hill. He's the 2nd creator of the lengthy-running, hit CW series to become writing a higher-profile new work for the network, together with Supernatural creator Eric Kripke, who's adapting Electricity Comic Deadman. Coincidentally, both Schwahn and Kripke have projects with Abrams this season. Near the CW hotel drama, Bad Robot’s other project in contention for next fall is Revolution, a legendary adventure thriller at NBC composed by Kripke, with a pilot production commitment.