Among the recent pilot orders for Fox on the drama front is a project set on an aircraft carrier, and another that sounds a bit like The Departed in its premise. The former involves Justified's Graham Yost and the latter, Fast Five's Chris Morgan. Wild Blue and Gang Related cap off the eight hour-long drama pilots in development for Fox.
Wild Blue was formerly titled The Bridge and comes from Taylor Elmore (Justified) with Graham Yost and Michael Dinner having helped with the rewrites on the project last fall. Deadline describes the pilot as "an upstairs/downstairs look at pressure-cooker lives of the US Navy." It would focus on the working men and women aboard the U.S. Aircraft Carrier, which boasts a 500 foot landing strip, a nuclear reactor and 6000 souls on board. Thoughts of a drama set aboard a ship that big makes me think of Battlestar Galactica, though that's less about the sci-fi element - there doesn't appear to be one with Wild Blue - and more about the idea of a drama that focuses on the community of military people on a giant ship. There's definite potential with the concept, that's for sure.
Meanwhile, Chris Morgan's Gang Related comes from 20th Century Fox TV and follows a gang member who infiltrates the San Francisco Police Department and climbs the ladder of the organization while trying to balance his work responsibilities (and "increasing sense of loyalty") at the police department with his obligations to his crime family. That sounds a little like the plot of The Departed, which was set in Boston and had Matt Damon's character working for the Massachusetts state police while secretly working for an Irish mob boss. In the case of the Martin Scorsese film, Damon's character was loyal to the mob. Would the same remain the case for the lead character in Gang Related? We may find out. As mentioned, there are eight drama pilots on Fox's plate right now, so Gang Related has some competition.
