It’s pilot season at ABC. The broadcast network, which has been leaning into its “second cycle” strategy involving off-cycle pilot orders targeting midseason, picked up its first 2025 pilot, RJ Decker, in May, with Scott Speedman recently cast as the lead. It may soon be joined by another crime drama pilot led by a TV star in his 40s-50s, The Rookie North.
The spinoff, from The Rookie creator Alexi Hawley, has been gaining momentum for a pilot order, which would come once the lead is cast. A handful of known actors have already been approached for the role, I hear.
The Rookie North is one of several projects in serious pilot contention at ABC, along with the long-gestating Scrubs reboot, and two family comedies, the Rachel Bloom starrer Do You Want Kids?, which features a couple with and without a baby, and Mittens, which revolves around a neighborhood cat. The Rookie North is co-produced by Lionsgate TV and 20th Television; the rest are 20th TV productions. (Mittens also comes from 20th TV-based The Littlefield Company.)
Whichever makes it to pilot will be looking to join ABC’s one new scripted series on the 2025-26 schedule so far, 9-1-1: Nashville, which received a straight-to-series order in February. With The Rookie North as a formidable prospect, the network could introduce offshoots of two of its biggest drama hits, 9-1-1 and The Rookie, next season.
Deadline revealed exclusively in December that ABC was developing a second Rookie spinoff, written/executive produced by Hawley and executive produced by The Rookie star/executive producer Fillion and fellow executive producers Bill Norcross, whose real-life story inspired the mothership series, and Michelle Chapman.
Unlike the first spinoff, The Rookie: Feds, which originated as a planted spinoff and was introduced in a two-episode arc on the main series, The Rookie North took the standalone pilot route from the get-go with Hawley writing.
“I’ve been going back, and there’s a script, I’ve been doing some drafts and getting some notes,” he told Deadline in May. “You know me, I’m a hopeful person, so I remain hopeful. I mean, it would be a great thing. So let’s see.”
Over its development, The Rookie North may have evolved to more closely resemble the mothership, which started off with Fillion‘s John Nolan switching careers to become the oldest rookie in the LAPD.
Set in Washington state, the potential spinoff was originally going to follow a male cop who is stepping into a new phase of life in his second act. Casting notices for the role, tentatively named Alex, describe him as a former overachiever who becomes a rookie cop after his life did not go as planned. Like the mothership series, the core characters in the offshoot also include a couple of training officers and rookies as well as a police chief.
Also moving toward a pilot order is the Scrubs reboot. Proving to be a very complex TV project to put together between series creator Bill Lawrence’s obligations under his exclusive overall deal with Warner Bros TV to securing the cast, dealmaking has been stretching on for months. Locked in so far are Lawrence as developer and executive producer (but not full-time showrunner) and star Zach Braff, who will reprise his role as John “J.D.” Dorian. Negotiations with the rest of the key original cast members are said to be wrapping up, which would pave the way for the project to finally get a pilot green light.
Lawrence told Deadline last fall that he envisions Scrubs 2.0 as a hybrid between a revival, revisiting original characters a decade and a half after the original series ended its run, and a reboot, bringing back the original concept with new surgical interns.
With no new comedy series picked up for next season yet, the network is ramping up its half-hour development which, in addition to Scrubs, includes two original scripts in play, I hear.
One of them is Do You Want Kids?, which ABC landed as a pitch last October in a competitive situation. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend alumna Rachel Bloom is attached to star in the single-camera project, which she is co-writing/executive producing with her husband, film and TV writer Dan Gregor. Steve Levitan also executive produces the comedy, about a husband and wife who in one universe have a baby and in the other does not, and the many ways that huge decision alters their lives.
The other comedy in pilot consideration is Mittens, I hear. Written/executive produced by Victor Quinaz
with former black-ish showrunner Courtney Lilly supervising and executive producing, it is described as a contemporary family comedy told from the POV of Mittens, a neighborhood cat who, unbeknownst to the community, lives at all three houses on a cul-de-sac. Also exec producing are The Littlefield Co.’s Warren Littlefield, Lisa Harrison and Ann Johnson.
As the development process progresses, a couple of other comedy projects that had been under consideration, Friends & Family, starring Cobie Smulders and written by Morgan Murphy; and The Sandwich, written by and starring Jessica St. Clair & Kyle Bornheimer, are no longer in the running, I hear.
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