EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation with multiple networks bidding, ABC has nabbed a drama project from former Chuck executive producer Matthew Miller and Lin Pictures with a put pilot commitment. Titled Forever, the drama hails from Warner Bros. TV where Miller and Lin Pictures are under overall deals. It centers on Dr. Henry Morgan, the most over-qualified pathology associate in the world who has experienced it all — wars, love, even smallpox and malaria — but there is one feat that he can’t seem to accomplish: dying. Morgan is a 200-year-old man who spends his days working in the New York City Morgue trying to find a key to unlock the curse of his immortality. His investigative work with hard-nosed NYPD detective Jo Martinez will reveal elements of Morgan’s colorful life. Miller will be writing the script and will executive produce with Lin Pictures’ Dan Lin and Jennifer Gwartz. Forever draws some parallels to the short-lived 2008 Fox drama series New Amsterdam, which starred Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as a 400-year-old NYPD homicide detective with a female partner, Eva Marquez (Zuleikha Robinson).
This marks Miller’s return to ABC where last season he served as executive producer/showrunner on supernatural drama 666 Park Ave, also from WBTV. He is with WME and McKuin, Frankel, Whitehead. Lin Pictures, repped by WME and Myman Abell Fineman, has comedy pilot Assistants still in contention at Fox, which is eyeing a new pilot.
This is such a ripoff of “New Amsterdam”
Didn’t they already have a show like this only the guy was a cop and not a pathologist?
Forever Knight, about a vampire who worked as a cop.
New Amsterdam!!! I loved that series. Glad to see they’re remaking it.
Great concept. Look forward to the script. Rife with possibility.
No, but really, you guys. This IS New Amsterdam.
Someone get me the Kingslayer.
“Another time, Highlander…”
And he works in a morgue! How ironic!
More like a high concept ripoff of one of the best Twilight Zone episodes ever, Long Live Walter Jameson starring Kevin McCarthy. He was a history professor who knew everything about history because he was 2,000 years old and recounted the historical events firsthand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Live_Walter_Jameson
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1054648089/
But he wasn’t immortal he died from a bullet wound. The doctor in Forever could also kill himself if he really wanted to. He could jump off a very tall building or drown himself or blow himself up with dynamite or soak himself with gasoline and light a match.
Just because it features an immortal, it doesn’t make it a rip-off of an old Twilight Zone episode.
The secret is out… he farts a lot.
The gas his body secretes has over time created a perfect balance of immunity that no disease, or war, can penetrate.
That is until he begins hanging out with cops and eating ‘cop food’.
You see dude really wants to help protect people and stuff but it’s literally killing him. And he’s clairvoyant too.
HIgh concept idea in Hollywood parlance is synonymous with a trick or device used to attract business or attention..in other words a gimmick. Next.
This is development? If New Amsterdam couldn’t make the cut, there is little chance for this stripped down, hackneyed version.
You have no idea what the new show will be like. New Amsterdam was a good show. It’s just that high concept shows had little chance when it came out . Times have changed. Who ever thought a show about fairy tale characters would succeed?
Kevin Reilly pulled the plug of New Amsterdam– didn’t he know he had a star in Nikolaj Coster-Waldau?
Yeah, cause if I’d lived for over 200 years, I’d work in a city morgue…. ssdd.
Matt Miller destroyed Human Target with his second seaon revamp. No way will I ever invest time in anything he has a creative voice in.
Do you know why the original showrunner of Human Target was replaced?
I’m guessing no.
Because Matt Miller is a hog.
So it is New Amsterdam, light. If this is HIGH concept what is the show it is New Amsterdam? Gotta say I came to Human Target late and binged on the whole show in a few days and its second season really showed me how much a show can implode. It is nice to have a show like this coming; New Amsterdam will be 7 or 8 years cancelled by the time its premiere is announced. Too bad the idea came from a show-wrecker.
I loved ‘New Amsterdam’ – still miss it.
MATT MILLER IS BRILLIANT. LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS.
this is the same story from a book called….you guessed it…Forever by Pete Hammill…surprised no one has mentioned this yet?
You can be sure Hammill will mention it when he sues them for copyright infringement. Unless they optioned his book he will sue or his publisher will sue unless it’s a Time Warner book in which case they can get away with stealing the story. It would be settled with an under the table payment to Pete and he will get some kind of credit on it.
Hey! I just sold a show too! It’s a buddy thing. And one of the buddies is a pie. And they travel back in time for some reason…
One should not mix time travel and dessert.
Pete Hamill had a best seller of the same title about a centuries-old Manhattanite. Must just be a coincidence.
NEW New Amsterdam! Nice.
200 years old? Hope he went to medical school sometime in the last twenty years. Or can self-educate himself on all the latest developments in his field via the Internet.