By: Lesley Goldberg
“Identity” hails from Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, while Jennie Snyder Urman’s “Virgin” is based on the Venezuelan telenovela.
The CW joined the pilot fray on Wednesday, picking up dramas from three established producers.
The youth-skewing network has picked up terrorism drama Identity, from Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, and Jane the Virgin, an adaptation of the Venezuelan telenovela.
Identity centers on a young woman in need of a transplant who learns she is related to a powerful family whose son is her only hope for a donor organ. The CIA approaches her to investigate the family’s involvement in domestic terrorism and to infiltrate their rarified world. Her loyalty, morality and ethics are tested as she’s forced to slowly build a case against the family who saved her life.
Corinne Brinkerhoff (The Good Wife) will pen the script and exec produce alongside Kurtzman, Orci and their K/O Paper Products president Heather Kadin. Scripted World’s Rob Golenberg (Betrayal) and Alon Aranya (Hostages) will also executive produce the drama from CBS Television Studios, K/O and Scripted World.
Identity was one of multiple projects Kurtzman/Orci had in the works this season after theStar Trek duo moved from 20th Century Fox to CBS Television Studios last year.
Jane the Virgin hails from Emily Owens, M.D.’s Jennie Snyder Urman, who will pen the script for the project, which centers on a hard-working, religious, young Latina woman who is accidentally artificially inseminated following a series of surprising and unforeseen events.
Urman will executive produce the CBS Television Studios entry alongside Electus’ Ben Silverman, Gary Pearl and Jorge Granier.
Virgin is one of multiple sales Urman and Silverman had this development season. It’s Urman’s second pilot order so far this season and joins Fox’s multicamera comedy Sober Companion, which the network is producing with an eye toward series production.
Wednesday’s pilot orders join The Flash, a spinoff of second-year drama Arrow that is now being filmed as a stand-alone pilot rather than a planted episode in the series starringStephen Amell. This brings the network’s tally to three (so far).
For its part, The CW in the past two years has ordered eight drama pilots. The network has not yet developed an original scripted comedy but is looking to its digital platform, CW Seed, to potentially develop web properties with an eye on making the transition. In September The CW picked up Canadian sperm donor sitcom Seed with an eye on pairing it with Whose Line Is It Anyway.