ABC Summer Pilot Buzz: ‘Will Trent’, ‘The Company You Keep’ Battling It Out – Update

Nellie Andreeva

UPDATE 3:30 PM: There have been last minute developments as ABC is finalizing its decisions on off-cycle 2022 pilots. Drama Will Trent, which had been garnering the strongest buzz since early summer, has started to cool off. While Will Trent and The Company You Keep both appeared likely to go series, with writers rooms already up and running on both, I now hear that this is still a real possibility but no longer a lock. There is a chance that only one of the two dramas makes it to series.

Meanwhile, as we predicted earlier, ABC officially passed on the Untitled Kay Oyegun drama pilot and comedy pilot The Son in Law.

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PREVIOUS 8:30 AM: When Deadline ran the Summer Edition of its tradition Pilot Buzz column last week, ABC brass were yet to see some of their off-cycle pilots so information on the status of the five contenders at the network was murky.

We have more clarity now, and the two strongest early contenders, drama pilots Will Trent, starring Ramon Rodriguez as a Special Agent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, and The Company You Keep, headlined by This Is Us star Milo Ventimiglia, both are looking good for a pickup. As we reported, both projects had opened writers rooms so they can hit the ground running in hopes that they would get series orders.

The Untitled Kay Oyegun drama pilot and comedy pilot The Son in Law are not looking very good and probably won’t go forward, though The Son In Law may be rolled to next season for redevelopment, I hear.

Drama pilot Criminal Nature, which was a retooled version of a project that was originally piloted last season, has been pretty quiet, and its status is unclear.

ABC in May picked up to series drama pilot Alaska, starring Hilary Swank, The Rookie planted spinoff, The Rookie: Feds, headlined by Niecy Nash, and comedy pilot Not Dead Yet, starring Gina Rodriguez. The network also gave a straight-to-series order to David E. Kelley’s drama Avalon.

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