6 months ago
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CBS is in the works on a brand new soap opera series with a Black family as the focus. The Gates was recently announced as a new series in development and now a CBS exec is spilling exciting details surrounding the show. CBS CEO and president George Cheeks told Vulture that the new series is “super real” and not just an idea. Keep reading to find out more… “To give you a little bit of the backstory, when we hired Sheila Ducksworth to run the NAACP venture, she and I had multiple meetings talking about what different genres she was going to lean into, and we talked a lot about daytime,” Cheeks said. “One of the things that the data made very clear to both of us is that daytime soap operas over index with Black women, and yet when you look at soap operas, it’s usually sort of a white-led family with supporting characters that reflect more of our society. So we just thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to flip that and make the core anchor family a Black family, and then make the other characters reflect more the broader scope of society?” Cheeks added, “She found this great writer, Michele Val Jean, who’s been in the soap opera space for 30 years. She came up with a pitch, and we loved it. We brought Procter & Gamble into it as well, because if there were going to be [product] integrations, we could do it more holistically and organically. All of that is to say, we did a lot of work on the front end to put this together. So while yes, it’s development, it’s accelerated development.” While he wouldn’t say for certain, Cheeks confirmed that the show is “being developed as an hour” show and not a 30-minute series. He added, “The actual timeline and when we’re going to do it is still uncertain, because we want to get this right. I mean, there hasn’t been a new soap opera launch since I can’t even begin to tell you when. But we have great success with Bold and the Beautiful and Young and the Restless, and so we think we’re the right folks to be launching a new soap. I wish I could tell you more about exact timing, but we’re so focused on getting it right, and that will dictate when we’re ready to launch it.” Read more from the interview at Vulture.com. A new report revealed which show might be replaced if The Gates is greenlit.
