While the Fox network has abandoned the traditional pilot season as they’re now programming for year round and going with different and less hectic development times, it’s still pilot season and the upfronts are coming up soon. And that means the networks have to make decisions soon about what they’re going to do for shows that are being tested and reworked. That portion of the year is admittedly a lot of fun for me since I’ve followed a lot of pilots and what goes on with them for the last several months. On the genre side, there is some really interesting early buzz coming up in regards to the second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the proposed Agent Carter period piece. AoS will get a second season, of that there’s no doubt, though I expect they’ll really have to step it up in order to garner a third. But according to the very reliable Deadline, there’s a chance that ABC could do both shows right this season, if they don’t botch it like they did with the two Once Upon a Time series this past season by running them at the same time instead of like proposed below:
Then there is Marvel’s stealth Agent Carter project. Last year, the company went into Fort Knox mode on its Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot, which was kept under lock and key. They took that a notch further this year with carterAgent Carter. Because there is a prototype — the project is inspired by a one shot, which was featured on the Blu-ray release of Iron Man 3 — word has been that it would forgo a pilot and go straight to series. The script was finished more than three months ago (“the script is great,” ABC’s Paul Lee said back in January), the option on one-shot’s star Hayley Atwell came up and was extended, but the green light never came. Now there is talk that a pickup for Agent Carter may come along with a renewal for Marvel’s freshman Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., with the new series possibly serving as a bridge between the fall and spring portions of S.H.I.E.L.D.
