The husband-and-wife team, which both created and executive produce The Good Wife, have a three-year deal with the CBS Television Studios, and Braindead will be the first series under this new deal. As with The Good Wife, the pair will both write and executive produce the new show as well.
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Classified as a comic thriller, Braindead will be a major departure from The Good Wife. The premise combines two hot TV formulas today: political drama and sci-fi/thriller/horror. The story follows a young DC Capitol Hill staffer who, upon starting her very first job, discovers that aliens have landed on Earth and are eating the brains of various congressmen and Hill employees. It’s like Scandal meets The Walking Dead; or Sense8 meets House of Cards. Or, as the Kings themselves suggest, The Strain meets The West Wing.
Indeed, the Kings say they set out to create a show that mixes “genre-pulp and highbrow politics,” and suggest the desire to address the news today with “not straight, but as the opening act of a horror movie.” It sounds like there might be more serious undertones to the show than we may see on the surface.
Nina Tassler, Chair at CBS Entertainment, calls the concept for the show “intriguingly original,” adding that it offers “layers of humor, suspense, and the supernatural.”
The Kings will be in good company as they move forward with Braindead: Ridley Scott, David Zucker, and Liz Glotzer will also executive produce, along with Scott Free Productions and King Size Productions; while Judy Smith will be co-executive producer.
The Good Wife fans will be happy to know that the Kings will still be working on that CBS show, which returns this Fall for its seventh season. Braindead will premiere next summer with 13 one-hour episodes.
