USA's Damnation and WGN America's Roadside Picnic.
USA's DAMNATION
- The cable network has ordered a pilot for drama Damnation written by Tony Tost. He will serve as executive producer with James Mangold, Guymon Casady and Daniel Rappaport. Universal Cable Productions and Entertainment 360 will produce. Described as an epic saga of the secret history of the 1930s American heartland, the project centers on the mythic conflict and bloody struggle between big money and the downtrodden, God and greed, charlatans and prophets. The pilot centers on Seth Davenport, a man masquerading as a small town Iowa preacher in the hopes of starting a full-blown insurrection against the status quo. Focused on his mission, he is unaware that an industrialist tycoon has hired a profession strikebreaker named Creeely Turner to stop the uprising by any means necessary. But unbeknownst to those around them, these two men already share a secret bloody past.
WGN AMERICA's ROADSIDE PICNIC
- Matthew Goode (The Good Wife, Downton Abbey) is set to play the lead role on the drama pilot written by Jack Paglen. He will play Redrick "Red" Shuhart, an enigmatic, blue-collar contradiction who can be quietly intelligent one moment and utterly ruthless the next. He has a loving relationship with his wife Guta and his daughter Marie - who is shunned because she is a child of the "Zone," the site of a long-ago extraterrestrial visitation. Red used to be a "Stalker," one of the brave souls willing to risk their lives by illegally entering the Zone to sell what they find on the black market. Recently out of prison, Red finds his troubles are just beginning.
