NBC Saddles Up to Another Western Project

"Cold Case" executive producer Shaun Cassidy has been tapped to pen the 1840s-set "The Frontier," with Thomas Schlamme set to direct the pilot should the project move forward.

6:48 PM PDT 9/13/2011 by Lesley Goldberg

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NBC is heading West. Again.

The network has given a script order to The Frontier, the second Western project NBC has put in the pipeline this development season.

Set in the 1840s, Frontier revolves around a group who follows their dreams and heads West from Missouri across the uncharted country.

Cold Case executive producer Shaun Cassidy will executive produce the project, with Paul Frank and The West Wing’s Thomas Schlamme, who would direct the pilot should the project advance. The project hails from Sony Pictures Television.

The script order for Frontier comes as Westerns continue to be in high demand, with AMC set to premiere its upcoming series Hell on Wheels, set during the building of the Union Pacific Railroad in the 1860s.

NBC ordered a script late last month from Universal Television and Friday Night Lights producers Pete Berg and Liz Heldens described as a Western story told from a female point of view. ABC and CBS have David Zabel’s Gunslinger and James Mangold’s Ralph Lamb, respectively.

A&E also has the pilot Longmire, about a widowed sheriff in Wyoming, and TNT has ordered Gateway.

Email: Lesley.Goldberg@thr.com; Twitter: @Snoodit