‘Harmony’ Drama From ‘The Fosters’ Creators, ‘Pippin’ Composer & Mandeville TV Gets Production Commitment At ABC

ABC has given a pilot production commitment to Harmony, a drama from Pippin and Godspell composer Stephen Schwartz and Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik, The Fosters‘ creators Peter Paige and Bradley Bredeweg, ABC Studios and studio-based Mandeville TV.

Written by Bredeweg, Paige and Jacob Chase from an original idea by Chase, Harmony is set in the town of Harmony, NY, where residents have the most unique dialect in the world: They sing their feelings and dance their emotions. When a brutal murder rocks this thriving tourist destination, a repressed detective must return to the musical town he left as a teen — to solve the crime and confront the ghosts that have haunted him since he fled.

Bredeweg and Paige executive produce with Jon Chu, who also is attached to direct, along with Jonathon Komack-Martin and Mandeville TV’s David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman and Laurie Zaks. Schwartz and Ondrasik will compose original music for the project and executive produce. Chase, a recent alum of the 2017 Sundance Episodic Lab, is co-executive producing.

Lieberman and Hoberman are coming off producing the boxoffice musical hit Beauty and the Beast for Disney.

Mandeville TV has several other projects in the works at ABC, including police drama Safe Harbor from Detroit 1-8-7 creator Jason Richman, and business start-up drama Mavericks from Brooklyn Girls author Gemma Burgess.

Mandeville is repped by UTA. Bredeweg & Paige are repped by CAA. Chase is repped by Paradigm, Nicholas Bogner at Affirmative Entertainment and attorney Eric Feig.