Heh. I got a kick out of this story, considering that I just did one about Catherine Hardwicke segueing to a project seemingly not that far removed from Twilight. According to Variety, Matt Olmstead and Nick Santora, the showrunners for Fox’s recently-wrapped Prison Break, a show about fugitives, have just signed on to return to Fox for Break Out Kings, a show about former fugitives who are recruited by the government to become U.S. Marshals. Sort of a fugitive Mod Squad I guess. Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) is attached to direct and exec produce also.
Now the project could be solid, especially considering that Olmstead has experience working on NYPD Blue and also created the short-lived Blind Justice a few years back. But just the fact that he and Santora jump from Prison Break to the ironically-titled Break Out Kings just forces the chuckle from me. It’s sort of like if Paula Abdul signed up to do another singing show called American Icon; or if Kelsey Grammer’s new sitcom would be titled Fraser, about a former radio talk show host who becomes a shrink; or David Hasselhoff starring in Night Rider, about a former lifeguard who becomes a long haul trucker whose rig talks to him or Greg Evigan starring as a gay polygamist who adopts in a show called My Five Fathers; or even co-starring in a TV biopic about Michael Jackson as Bubbles’ handler (that’s a BJ and the Bear reference for all you twentysomethings and under). It just sounds nutty.