Inching their way to your television screen:• ABC has granted pilot orders to Marlowe, a contemporary take on Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled private eye, and Pushing Daisies, a romantic drama about a man who can bring dead people back to life, just by touching them.• NBC has ordered a pilot for Zip, a comedy about a grifter who angles to live the good life with his kids in Beverly Hills.• Sci Fi has teamed with Sex and the City creator Darren Star and scribe Mike Werb (Face/Off) on a crime series about four convicts outfitted with technologically enhanced bodies (Pam Anderson is already in the casting office) and sent to work for a covert wing of the government, says Reuters.• Lifetime has given a series pickup and set a summer debut for State of Mind, starring Lili Taylor as a therapist.
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ABC is pondering a fresh take on Raymond Chandler's famous sleuth, Philip Marlowe, in the form of a present-day procedural boasting noir aspects, reports Variety. Though there are no plans to use any Chandler books as source material, producer Sean Bailey promises "femme fatales and very wealthy individuals".... HBO is developing a miniseries about the Third Crusade, the 12th-century clash between Islam and Christianity, told through the eyes of their respective leaders, Saladin and Richard the Lionheart. "This is not some dry historical costume drama," screenwriter Kario Salem (The Rat Pack) tells the Hollywood Reporter. "I think of it as a medieval gangster epic." With femme fatales and wealthy people?... ABC has granted a pilot order to a "CEOs gone wild" drama from Jon Feldman (Reunion), while Fox is hot for New Amsterdam, about a New York homicide detective who is secretly centuries-old. Hey, I think we may see Abe Vigoda with a badge again!
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