David E. Kelley continues to add to his impressive résumé.
The prolific producer is teaming with Melissa James Gibson (House of Cards) to adapt author Sarah Vaughan’s international best-seller Anatomy of a Scandal as an anthology series for Netflix. Sources say the plan is for each season to tackle a different scandal.
The streamer has handed out a six-episode series order for the drama, with Kelley and Melissa James set to serve as writers, exec producers and showrunners. The series is described as an insightful and suspenseful drama about a sexual consent scandal among the British privileged elite and the women caught up in its wake. S.J. Clarkson (Netflix’s Marvel dramas Jessica Jones, The Defenders) will direct and exec produce all six episodes of the series, which will film in the U.K.
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Kelley will re-team with Big Little Lies exec producer Bruna Papandrea on Anatomy of a Scandal. The latter’s Made Up Stories banner will exec produce alongside the company’s Steve Hutensky and Allie Goss, with 3Dot Productions’ Liza Chasin (The Loudest Voice), author Vaughan and Margaret Chernin also on board.
For Kelley, Anatomy of a Scandal joins ABC’s The Big Sky, Disney+ hourlong dramedy Big Shots, starring John Stamos; HBO’s Nicole Kidman limited series The Undoing and the forthcoming final season of Amazon’s Goliath (though he is famously no longer involved in the latter). The prolific producer behind Ally McBeal, The Practice and Boston Legal is awaiting word on the future of Audience Network’s Mr. Mercedes, with the WarnerMedia-owned platform officially exiting the scripted space. This broadcast season, Kelley also scored a production commitment from CBS for an adaptation of Michael Connelly’s best-seller The Lincoln Lawyer, though the network recently made the surprising decision to pass on picking the reboot up to series.
