With one of their tele-babies, Fringe, set to wrap up this coming season, prolific writer / producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are not planning to spend more time developing the thousands of movies and TV shows they’ve already got bubbling away. Nope: they’ve pitched a new take on Sleepy Hollow to 20th Century Fox TV and have already recruited Underworld director Len Wiseman to tackle the pilot.
Though inspired by the same legend that formed the basis for Tim Burton’s 1999 film, the new series is going to be set in modern times and finds Ichabod Crane as an investigator specialising in the supernatural who teams up with the local female sheriff to solve the increasingly weird mysteries around town. A place that, despite its name, is the focal point for a battle between good and evil.
Because they don’t have time to run the series themselves, Orci and Kurtzman are writing the first script with newcomer Phillip Iscove and will hire a team to keep things moving should the show go to series. For now, they’re pitching the idea around the big US networks. Wiseman isn’t new to working with them; he directed the pilot for their most recent TV project, the reboot of Hawaii Five-0, which is starting its third season in a couple of months.