‘Grosse Pointe Garden Society’ Ordered To Pilot By NBC

NBC has given a pilot order to Grosse Pointe Garden Society, a long-in-the-works drama from Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs.

The drama follows four members of a suburban garden club, all from different walks of life, who get caught up in murder and mischief as they struggle to make their conventional lives bloom.

The studio is Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group. Production company is Minnesota Logging Company. Casey Kyber is a non-writing EP.

Both Bans and Krebs have overall deals at Universal Television.

The project first surfaced early in 2023, when NBC commissioned writers room for it and The Hunting Party, a high-concept crime procedural from JJ Bailey and The Endgame co-creator Jake Coburn. The latter revolves around a small team of investigators who are assembled to track down and capture the most dangerous killers our country has ever seen, all of whom have just escaped from a top-secret prison that’s not supposed to exist.

Deadline has learned that The Hunting Party remains in contention.

Pilots are becoming a relic of the past. Fox is out of the pilot biz while CBS will not be picking up any for fall of 2024; instead the network has five scripted series already on tap for next season and a potential Fire Country spinoff in the works.

ABC isn’t doing them this season, either, though Disney Television Group President Craig Erwich told Deadline that “we will continue to make pilots as we always have; I do believe in pilots. There may be cases where we go straight-to-series on things, but those are individual decisions based on the very specific creative circumstances of each of those shows and what each of those shows needs in the development process to be fully creatively realized, because for us it’s always about quality versus quantity.”

The CW has chosen to zero in on foreign co-prods and low-cost unscripted shows.