The Good Wife and Sex and the City star Chris Noth will return to television as the lead in Gone, a new procedural series based on the best-seller One Kick from Chelsea Cain.
The one-hour drama has gotten a 12-episode, straight-to-series order from NBCUniversal International Studios, German network RTL and France’s TF1, and will be the first show greenlit under the company’s groundbreaking new agreement with the European channels to develop, finance and produce U.S. procedurals directly for international TV.
Matt Lopez (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) created Gone, which follows Kit “Kick” Lannigan, the survivor of a child abduction case. Noth plays Frank Booth, the FBI agent who rescues Kick. Years later, Booth convinces Kick, who has become an expert in martial arts and firearms, to join him on a special task force dedicated to solving abductions and missing persons cases. Lopez, JoAnn Alfano (Resurrection, 30 Rock), NBCUniversal International Studios’ executive vp, scripted programming and Sara Colleton (Dexter) will executive produce. Gone is set to launch in late 2017/early 2018.
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The series is the first in an experiment by NBCUniversal, RTL and TF1 to address what has become a major problem on the international television market: the lack of high-quality, U.S.-style procedurals. These episode-of-the-week style cop shows have fallen out of critical favor in the U.S. but are still very much in demand in Europe.
NBCUni International Television Production, TF1 and RTL will each contribute a third of the financing for the series they make together and will share equally in global revenues generated by the shows. RTL and TF1 will hold all rights for their respective territories, while NBCUniversal will license the shows in the rest of the world, including North America.
“For us, it’s financially right in the middle: more expensive than just acquiring a finished show but cheaper than producing something all on our own,” Jorg Graf, executive vp, production and acquisition at RTL, told THR.
Fabrice Bailly, head of programs and acquisition for TF1, said being involved early on, as co-producers on Gone, will give the European channels “creative input, and the series can reflect what we and the audience are looking for.”
