FX Orders Lights Out And Terriers To Series

FX continues its unprecedented ramp up of original programming with the network today placing series orders of two new dramas, Terriers and Lights Out, announced FX President and General Manager John Landgraf.  FX has ordered 13 episodes of each series, with Terriers tentatively slated to premiere next summer and Lights Out in late 2010.

Terriers, from Creator/Executive Producer Ted Griffin (Ocean’s Eleven) and Executive Producer Shawn Ryan (The Shield), is a comedic drama starring Donal Logue (The Tao of Steve, Damages) and Michael Raymond-James (True Blood).  It centers on “Hank Dolworth” (Logue), an ex-cop who partners with his best friend “Britt Pollack” (Raymond-James) to launch an unlicensed private investigation business.  The duo, both struggling with maturity issues, solve crimes while avoiding danger and responsibility. Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow, The Shield) directed the pilot episode. Terriers is produced by Fox 21.

Lights Out, from Executive Producer/Showrunner Warren Leight (In Treatment) and Creator/Executive Producer Justin Zackham (The Bucket List), stars Holt McCallany as an aging former heavyweight boxing champion who struggles to find his identity and support his wife and three daughters after retiring from the ring.  Financial problems leave him at a perilous crossroads – battling the urge to return to boxing or reluctantly accepting a job as a brutal and intimidating debt collector.  Clark Johnson (The Shield, The Wire) directed the pilot episode. Phillip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger) and Ross Fineman are also Executive Producers.  Lights Out is produced by Fox Television Studios and FX Productions.

“The series orders for Terriers and Lights Out cap off an unprecedented year of program development for FX,” said Landgraf.  “It’s great to be back in business with Shawn Ryan, who ignited the network’s successful run of original programming seven years ago with the launch of The Shield.  With Terriers, Ted Griffin and Shawn have come up with a very entertaining comedic drama that’s a bit of a departure in tone of an FX series, but lives up to the quality of the network.

“In Lights Out, Warren Leight and Justin Zackham have delivered a very compelling character in Patrick “Lights” Leary, and we were just blown away by the performance of Holt McCallany in the lead role.”

With the pick-ups of Terriers and Lights Out, FX is basic cable’s undisputed leader in scripted original programming with seven dramas and four comedies.  In 2009, FX went six-for-six on pilot-to- series orders, picking up three dramas and three comedies. In addition to Terriers and Lights Out, FX picked up Lawman, developed by Graham Yost (Boomtown, Speed) and starring Timothy Olyphant (Damages, Deadwood) in the lead role of “Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens,” the popular Elmore Leonard character featured from his short story Fire in the Hole.  Yost, who created and produced the critically acclaimed NBC drama Boomtown, wrote the pilot and will serve as Executive Producer/Writer on the series.  Leonard (Cuba Libre, Rum Punch, Get Shorty) will serve as an Executive Producer on the series along with Sarah Timberman (Kidnapped), Carl Beverly (Kidnapped) and Michael Dinner (Sons of Anarchy), who directed the pilot episode. Lawman premieres in March.

The network’s three new comedies are The League, an ensemble comedy series set against the backdrop of a fantasy football league from producers Jeff Schaffer (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld) and Jackie Marcus Schaffer (Disturbia), will premiere on October 29 and run Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT following all new episodes of the hit comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; the acclaimed new animated series Archer premiering in January from Adam Reed (Frisky Dingo) which features the voices of H. Jon Benjamin, Jessica Walter, Aisha Tyler, George Coe, Chris Parnell and Judy Greer; and, premiering in early 2010, Louie, starring comedian Louis C.K., is a comedy filtered through the observational humor of C.K. as a successful stand-up comedian, newly single father raising his two daughters and his everyday life in New York City.  

The six new series join the FX lineup which includes the breakout hit drama Sons of Anarchy; the Emmy® and Golden Globe® Award-winning legal thriller Damages; the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning drama nip/tuck, which begins its sixth season on October 14; the Emmy-winning and Golden Globe-nominated drama Rescue Me, which returns for its sixth season next summer; and the acclaimed hit comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, currently in its fifth season.

In its history, FX has produced 14 drama pilots, 11 of which have received series orders.