The prestige-TV boom continues: Patty Jenkins and Chris Pine are coming to TNT to collaborate on a limited series titled One Day She’ll Darken. Jenkins, fresh off her wild success as director of Wonder Woman, will direct and executive produce the six-episode drama, while Pine—who co-starred in the film opposite Gal Gadot—will star and executive produce, with author Sam Sheridan (who happens to be Jenkins’s husband) on board to write all six installments.
The series, which was reportedly shopped to multiple premium-cable outlets and streaming services, as well as FX, before landing at TNT, is based on the autobiography of Fauna Hodel, who, according to the press release, “was given away by her teenage birth mother to a black restroom attendant in a Nevada casino in 1949. As Fauna begins to investigate the secrets to her past, she follows a sinister trail that swirls ever closer to an infamous Hollywood gynecologist, Dr. George Hodel, a man involved in the darkest Hollywood debauchery, the spider in the web around the legendary ‘Black Dahlia’ murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles in 1947.” Jenkins is on board to direct at least the pilot, if not more.
TNT might seem like an unlikely place for such a star-studded project to land, but this could be just the kind of project the network needs to transform itself into a real player in the increasingly cluttered TV landscape. The network is currently No. 1 in primetime with young adults, but lacks the esteemed reputation that networks like HBO and FX now enjoy. TNT currently airs seven original scripted programs, including Claws and Will, which premiered this year. Some of these, including Claws, have been received pretty warmly by critics, but none of them has brought attention to the network in the same way that, say, Mad Men did for AMC back in 2007. One Day She’ll Darken, with its two power players, already seems like the type of project that could help put TNT on the map.
“Pine will play Jay Singletary, a former Marine-turned-hack reporter/paparazzo,” the release continues. “Jay was disgraced over his story about Hodel years ago, but now he sees a glimmer of redemption. This may be the opportunity Jay’s been hopelessly waiting for, but inside this riddle lies a moral quandary he never expected: a labyrinth into the evil in men’s hearts that will shake the unsteady Jay to his foundations.”
The series begins shooting this fall.
