Between A&E's Bates Motel and FX's new drama The Strain, Carl Cuse's influence is all over basic cable these days, and that may be expanding even further as USA has announced plans to move forward with a drama pilot by Carlton Cuse and Ryan Condal called Colony.
USA announced the pilot pick-up today, describing Colony (working title) as an "intense family drama in an authentic, yet unknown, world." Here's the official description for the potential series...
COLONY is a naturalistic drama about a family torn by opposing forces and making difficult choices as they balance staying together with surviving the struggle of the human race. Set in the near future, the story takes place in Los Angeles, which exists in a state of occupation by a force of outside intruders. Some collaborate with the authorities and benefit from the new order, while others rebel and suffer the consequences.
Sounds like another ambitious project for Carlton Cuse, but things have been working out well so far for his other post-Lost ventures. As mentioned, Cuse has Bates Motel creeping things up over at A&E, and he's also an executive producer on Guillermo del Toro's new vampire/outbreak horror drama The Strain over at FX. By the description for Colony, it sounds like this project will veer away from horror and more toward thriller. As for the mentioned "outside intruders," the description doesn't go into specifics there, but the mention of a "struggle of the human race" might be a good implication that they're up against something outside of that. Just the mention of the word "colony" has us thinking ant-people, but who knows?
While Cuse has Lost, Bates Motel and The Strain among his credits, Ryan Condal's resume's not quite as extensive, though he did co-write the screenplay for Hercules. More relevant to this project, he worked with Cuse before in creating The Sixth Gun, a TV pilot that didn't end up going to series.
Beyond the people working on this pilot, it's interesting to see this project happening at USA. When it comes to original programming, USA tends to stick with the more character and profession-focused dramas like Suits, Royal Pains, White Collar and Graceland. The fact that Cuse is involved leaves us to believe this could very well veer toward sci-fi and/or horror in some way, though USA's description is just vague enough to leave us guessing about exactly how genre this genre programming would be. Regardless, by the premise, it's still outside the box for the network, which is exciting on its own. So we'll have to wait and see what happens with this pilot and whether or not it ends up moving forward.
