The CW seems to be in the market for a drama that has teenagers quarantined in some way. After all, a show that focuses on only young people in a parentless setting has all the potential for drama without the side effect of parental involvement. The latest project on the network's radar is titled Sick and is set in a world where adults are allergic to teenagers.
Deadline reports that the CW has purchased Sick, a drama spec written by Trey Callaway and Sean Hood that's described as "a provocative cross between Contagion and The Hunger Games," set in a world where youths are quarantined because adults are allergy to them. A band of teens manage to escape their containment and go on the run from the authorities. Mention of Contagion makes me wonder if the adults' allergic reaction to teenagers involves a lot of mucus. And the Hunger Games reference brings us around to some of the other projects the CW has been looking at.
It seems like the CW's still looking for shows that put unsupervised teens into perilous situations. We learned last summer that the CW was toying with the idea of a TV adaptation of the Japanese book/movie Battle Royale a story about kids forced to battle to the death (this one came before The Hunger Games, which shares a similar premise). And just last month we shared word that The CW bought a sci-fi project involving juvenile delinquents being sent to a previously abandoned earth to explore the wildly changed planet in the hopes that the place can be recolonized.
These projects share the common thread of kids being set up to deal with life or death situations without parents around to help them or tell them what to do. And in the wake of the huge success of The Hunger Games, it's not all that difficult to understand why the CW might be looking for stories that suit that giant audience.
