Melissa Benoist Renews Overall Deal at Warner Bros. TV
Melissa Benoist is staying put at Warner Bros. TV — and has completed a deal to star in and produce an HBO Max series from the studio.
Benoist has renewed an overall deal with Warner Bros. for her company, Three Things Productions. The multi-year deal extends a relationship between the Supergirl star and the studio that began when she signed an overall deal in early 2021. Three Things, headed by Benoist and vp development Sahar Kashi, will continue to develop and produce series projects for platforms inside and outside the Warner Bros. Discovery umbrella.
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Additionally, Benoist has closed a deal to star in The Girls on the Bus, a dramedy about four female journalists covering a presidential campaign (The Hollywood Reporter noted in February that she was close to a deal). The HBO Max series, from Julie Plec and Supergirl executive producer Greg Berlanti, is inspired by a chapter in Amy Chozick’s 2016 campaign memoir Chasing Hillary. Benoist will also be a producer on the project.
Benoist will play Sadie McCarthy, a reporter who romanticizes the original “Boys on the Bus” and scraps her whole life for a shot at covering a presidential campaign for the paper of record. She hits the trail and bonds with three competitors. The four women become a found family with a front-row seat to the greatest soap opera in town: the battle for the White House.
HBO Max is the third home for The Girls on the Bus. Netflix originally ordered the series in 2019 after a bidding war but then dropped the project during the early days of the pandemic in 2020. The CW picked it up in September 2021 and had plans to redevelop the series, despite the fact that nearly a full season’s worth of scripts had already been completed. It shifted to HBO Max in February when the streamer gave it a series order.
Plec (Legacies, Peacock’s forthcoming Vampire Academy) and Chozick developed the story and will executive produce with showrunner Rina Mimoun, Berlanti and his Berlanti Productions partner Sarah Schechter.
Benoist is repped by UTA, Anonymous Content and Frankfurt Kurnit.
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