David Ayer is bringing his 2012 movie End of Watch to television. Fox has handed a script-to-series commitment to the police drama project based on original film, which starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña.
Co-written and executive produced by Ayer and former Them showrunner David Matthews, the End of Watch series follows the daily grind of two young Los Angeles police officers who are partners and friends, and what happens when they meet criminal forces greater than themselves. Fox Entertainment is the studio.
End of Watch is being developed under Fox Entertainment’s new strategy, implemented in 2020, which includes alternatives to traditional pilots. On the drama side, that involves going script-to-series. End of Watch is a version of that model — the network has ordered a pilot script, a backup script and a format and will make a series order decision based on that. Fox also has put multiple drama projects through writers rooms, which produce scripts that then are considered for a straight-to-series pickup.
Ayer, Chris Long and Darryll C. Scott executive produce via Cedar Park Studios. Also executive producing are Matthews, John Lesher — who produced the movie alongside Ayer — Andrea Iervolino, Monika Bacardi and Raven’s James Masciello. Bill Rotko is a consulting producer.
StudioCanal’s action thriller movie End of Watch, written, directed and produced by David Ayer, starred Gyllenhaal and Peña as LAPD officers Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala, friends and partners working in South Los Angeles.
Distributed by Open Road Films, the 2012 film, which also starred Anna Kendrick, Natalie Martinez, America Ferrera, Frank Grillo, Cody Horn and David Harbour, was a box office success, grossing $58 million on a budget in the neighborhood of $10M.
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