The Mythbusters guys have pretty impressive resumes. Jobs like linguist, boatman, animator and TV presenter pepper Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage’s respective resumes and soon it looks as if the two men might be able to add network television to the list. On Thursday, we learned that Hyneman and Savage have sold a drama project to CBS that sounds simultaneously oddball and right up the Eye Network’s alley. The project would follow two special effects workers after they are recruited by the CIA. Yes, you read that right.
The drama is currently untitled and it is also currently in the early stages over at CBS, as the network has only committed to a script for the project so far. We do know that if it moves forward it will be based on Hyneman and Savage’s actual experiences. THR reports that each week the new lead characters would use “basic tools” from the special effects department to help the CIA to solve pretty impossible cases.
If it’s anything like Scorpion or NCIS, it’ll probably be a little over-the-top, but that’s okay. The good news is that it will allow Hyneman and Savage to flex their producer muscles a little further. The two Mythbusters co-hosts will executive produce along with Gail Berman and Lilla and Nora Zuckerman. The latter two women will also be writing the script for the CBS project.
This isn’t the first time Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage have nabbed executive producing credits. The two men have acted as executive producers for the past several seasons on Mythbusters, although they weren’t executive producers early in the show’s 14-season run. In addition to producing, the two special effects experts should have a ton of stories that could feature prominently on a CBS program, both from Mythbusters and their lives before Mythbusters.
Still, network TV is a totally different beast than the Discovery Channel, which has housed Mythbusters during its run. Not only would it be a wholly scripted program, but the untitled drama from the two special effects guys will still (likely) need to get a pilot order from CBS before the network even thinks about moving forward to series. And while I’m sure the two gents can share enough stories to get a pretty interesting pilot off of the ground, there’s no guarantee that it would go to series after that, either. The untitled project has a rough row to hoe ahead of it, but we’ll let you know if it ends up moving forward.
In the meantime, new episodes of Mythbusters air on Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET. If that’s inconvenient, you can check out full episodes on Discovery’s site. As far as CBS is concerned, here’s what the network has coming up this fall.
