2020-21 Apple TV+ Pilots & Series Orders

BAD MONKEY (Ordered straight to series; 10 episodes)

Andrew Yancy is a one-time detective demoted to restaurant inspector in Southern Florida. A severed arm found by a tourist out fishing pulls Yancy into the world of greed and corruption that decimates the land and environment in both Florida and the Bahamas. And yes, there’s a monkey. Based on Carl Hiaasen’s novel.

CITY ON FIRE (Ordered straight to series)

An NYU student is shot in Central Park on the Fourth of July, 2003. Samantha Cicciaro is alone; there are no witnesses and very little physical evidence. Her friends’ band is playing her favorite downtown club, but she leaves to meet someone, promising to return. She never does. As the crime against Samantha is investigated, she’s revealed to be the crucial connection between a series of mysterious city-wide fires, the downtown music scene and a wealthy uptown real estate family fraying under the strain of the many secrets they keep. Based on the novel by Garth Risk Hallberg.

THE CHANGELING (Ordered straight to series)

When Apollo and Emma have their baby, Brian, it feels like both a reward and a challenge for the new dad. Apollo, the son of a single mother, had been scraping by as a bookseller who hunts estate and garage sales for rare first editions, so even the unusual circumstance of Brian’s birth (on a stalled subway train) seems like a blessing, as does the way Apollo stumbles across a first edition of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' (inscribed by Harper Lee to Truman Capote, no less) shortly thereafter. But after some young-parent squabbles and inexplicable images on their smartphones foreshadow trouble, the story turns nightmarish. Based on Victor LaValle’s novel.

THE CROWDED ROOM (Ordered straight to series; 10 episodes)

Anthology series explores the true and inspirational stories of those who have struggled and learned to successfully live with mental illness. The first season is inspired by Daniel Keyes’ biography 'The Minds of Billy Milligan.'

DISCLAIMER (Ordered straight to series)

Catherine Ravenscroft is a successful and respected TV documentary journalist whose work has been built on revealing the concealed transgressions of long-respected institutions. When an intriguing novel written by a widower appears on her bedside table, she is horrified to realize she is a key character in a story that she had hoped was long buried in the past. A story that reveals her darkest secret. A secret she thought was hers alone. Based on Renee Knight’s novel.

ECHO 3 (Ordered straight to series; six episodes)

Amber Chesborough is a brilliant young scientist and the emotional center of a small American family. When she goes missing along the Colombia-Venezuela border, her brother and her husband — two men with deep military experience and complicated pasts — struggle to find her against the explosive backdrop of a secret war.

THE ESSEX SERPENT (Ordered straight to series)

Newly widowed Cora, having being released from an abusive marriage, relocates from Victorian London to the small village of Aldwinter in Essex, intrigued by a local superstition that a mythical creature known as the Essex Serpent has returned to the area. Based on the novel by Sarah Perry.

EXTRAPOLATIONS (Ordered straight to limited series)

Anthology tells stories of how the upcoming changes to the planet will affect love, faith, work and family on a personal and human scale. Each episode will track the worldwide battle for our mutual survival spanning the 21st century.

FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL (Ordered straight to limited series)

Chronicles the first five days in a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. When the floodwaters rose, the power failed and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers were forced to make life-and-death decisions that haunted them for years to come. Based on the nonfiction book by Sheri Fink.

HEDY LAMARR (Ordered straight to series; originally developed at Showtime);

FKA Untitled Hedy Pamarr Project

Follows the life story of the Hollywood glamour girl Hedy Lamarr spanning 30 years from her daring escape from pre-war Vienna to her meteoric rise in the Golden Age of Hollywood to her fall and eventual disgrace at the dawn of the Cold War.

HELLO TOMORROW (Ordered straight to series; 10 episodes)

Set in a retro-future world, it revolves around a group of traveling salesmen hawking lunar timeshares. Jack is a salesman of great talent and ambition whose unshakeable faith in a brighter tomorrow inspires his co-workers and revitalizes his desperate customers, but threatens to leave him dangerously lost in the very dream that sustains him.

LADY IN THE LAKE (Ordered straight to limited series)

Set in 1960s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother Maddie Schwartz to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood, a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda. Based on Laura Lippman's novel.

THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME (Ordered straight to limited series)

A woman forms an unexpected relationship with her 16-year-old stepdaughter while searching for the truth about why her husband has mysteriously disappeared.

THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY (Ordered straight to limited series; six episodes)

Ptolemy Grey is a 91-year-old man forgotten by his family, by his friends, by even himself. On the brink of sinking even deeper into a lonely dementia, Ptolemy experiences a seismic shift when he’s given the tremendous opportunity to briefly regain his memories, He uses this precious and fleeting lucidity to solve his nephew’s death and come to terms with his past.

LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY (Ordered straight to series)

Set in the early 1960s, it follows Elizabeth Zott, whose dream of being a scientist is put on hold in a society deeming that women belong in the domestic sphere, not the professional one. When Elizabeth finds herself pregnant, alone and fired from her lab, she musters the ingenuity only a single mother has. She accepts a job as a host on a TV cooking show, and sets out to teach a nation of overlooked housewives – and the men who are suddenly listening – a lot more than recipes, all the while craving a return to her true love: science.

LOSING ALICE (Ordered straight to series; eight episodes)

Alice is a 48-year-old film director who feels irrelevant since raising her family. After a brief encounter on the train, she becomes obsessed with Sophie, a 24-year-old screenwriter femme fatale, and eventually surrenders her moral integrity in order to achieve power, relevance and success.

MANHUNT (Ordered straight to limited series)

Follows President Abraham Lincoln’s war secretary and friend Edwin Stanton, who nearly was driven to madness by his quest to catch assassin John Wilkes Booth and carry out Lincoln’s legacy. Based on the book 'Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer' by James Swanson.

MASTERS OF THE AIR (Ordered straight to limited series)

Folllows the true, deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. Based on the book by Donald L. Miller.

MR. CORMAN (Ordered straight to series)

A deep cut into the days and nights of a public schoolteacher in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley.

NOW AND THEN (Ordered straight to series)

Set in Miami, it explores the differences between youthful aspirations and the reality of adulthood, when the lives of a group of college best friends are forever changed after a celebratory weekend ends up with one of them dead. Now, 20 years later, the remaining five are reluctantly reunited by a threat that puts their seemingly perfect worlds at risk.

PHYSICAL (Ordered straight to series)

Set in a 1980s Southern California beach community. it follows Sheila, who is struggling in her life as a quietly tortured housewife but finds an unconventional path to power through an unlikely source: the world of aerobics.

ROAR (Ordered straight to series; eight episodes)

Anthology tells stories from a female point of view. Tells Based on Cecelia Ahern's book of short stories.

SEVERANCE (Ordered straight to series)

Set at Lumen Industries, a company that’s looking to take work-life balance to a new level.

SHINING GIRLS (Ordered straight to series)

A Depression-era drifter must murder the “shining girls” in order to continue his travels. Based on Lauren Beukes’ novel.

SHANTARAM (Ordered straight to series; 10 episodes)

Lin is a man on the run from an Australian prison looking to get lost in the teeming city of Bombay. Cut off from family and friends by distance and fate, he finds a new life in the slums, bars and underworld of India. Based on Gregory David Roberts’ novel.

SLOW HORSES (Ordered straight to series)

Jackson Lamb is the brilliant but irascible leader of a group of spies who end up in MI5’s Slough House, having been exiled from the mainstream for their mistakes. Based on Mick Herron’s spy novels.

SURFACE (Ordered straight to series)

Follows a woman’s quest to rebuild her life after a suicide attempt, and her struggle to remember – and understand – everything that led up to the moment when she jumped.

SURFSIDE GIRLS (Ordered straight to series)

Follows best friends Jade and Sam, who are psyched to spend their summer riding the waves and catching the rays. That is until they meet a ghost. The girls dive headfirst into a mystery about a pirate ship and the cursed treasure that allegedly lies beneath Surfside’s beloved Danger Point bluff. After meeting a pirate ghost named Remi, Sam wants to help him break the curse, while Jade is determined to find a scientific explanation for the existence of ghosts. Based on the graphic novel series by Kim Dwinell.

SWAGGER (Ordered strai8ght to series)

Explores the world of youth basketball and the players, their families and coaches who walk the fine line between dreams and ambition, and opportunism and corruption. Inspired by Kevin Durant’s youth basketball experiences.

WECRASHED (Ordered straight to limited series)

Follow the greed-filled rise and inevitable fall of WeWork, one of the world’s most valuable startups, and the narcissists whose chaotic love made it all possible. Based on thje podcast 'WeCrashed: The Rise and Fall of WeWork.'

WOOL (Ordered straight to series)

Set in a ruined and toxic future where a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. Men and women live there in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them.

THE AFTERPARTY (Ordered straight to series; single camera)

Murder mystery set at a high school reunion afterparty. Each of the eight episodes will feature a retelling of the same night told through a different character’s perspective, each with its own unique visual format and film genre to match the teller’s personality.

ACAPULCO (Ordered straight to series)

Set in 1984, a young Mexican man’s dream comes true when he gets the job of a lifetime at the hottest resort in Acapulco. But he soon realizes the job is far more complicated than he ever imagined as all of his beliefs and morals start to be questioned. Inspired by the 2017 movie 'How to Be a Latin Lover.'

AMBER BROWN (Ordered straight to series)

An unfiltered look at a girl finding her own voice through art and music in the wake of her parents’ divorce. Amber Brown is an everykid who is going through what many children experience and making sense of her new family dynamic through her sketches and video diary. Based on the book series by Paula Danziger.

THE BIG DOOR PRIZE (Ordered straight to series)

It's a story about the residents of a small town called Deerfield, who one day discover a magical, destiny-predicting machine in their grocery store. Based on the novel by M.O. Walsh.

HELLO TOMORROW!

Set in a retro-future world, it revolves around a group of traveling salesmen hawking lunar timeshares.

HIGH DESERT (Ordered straight to series)

Peggy is a former addict who decides to make a new start after the death of her mother with whom she lived in the small desert town of Yucca Valley, CA, and makes a life-changing decision to become a private investigator.

MR. CORMAN (Ordered straight to series)

A deep cut into the days and nights of a public schoolteacher in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley.

PLATONIC (Ordered straight to series; 10 episodes)

A pair of former best friends who met in their youth reconnect as adults and try to mend the rift that led to their falling out. As their friendship becomes more consuming, it destabilizes their lives and causes them to re-evaluate their choices. Each season will focus on a different couple.

SCHMIGADOON! (Ordered straight to series)

FKA Untitled Cinco Paul/Ken Daurio Project

A couple is on a backpacking trip designed to reinvigorate their relationship when they discover the magical town of Schmigadoon, in which everyone acts as if they’re in a studio musical from the 1940s. They then discover that they can’t leave until they find “true love.”

SHRINKING (Ordered straight to series; 10 episodes)

When a grieving therapist starts to break the rules and tell his clients exactly what he thinks, ignoring his training and ethics, he finds himself making huge, tumultuous changes to people’s lives -- including his own.

THE SHRINK NEXT DOOR (Ordered straight to series)

Follows the bizarre relationship between psychiatrist to the stars Dr. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf and his longtime patient Martin “Marty” Markowitz. Over the course of their relationship, the all-too-charming Ike slowly takes over Marty’s life, even moving into Marty’s Hamptons home and taking over his family business. The series explores how a seemingly normal doctor-patient dynamic morphs into an unprecedentedly exploitative relationship filled with manipulation, power grabs and dysfunction at its finest, Inspired by true events.

STRANGE PLANET (Ordered straight to series; animated)

Stories of big eyed, bright blue "beings" from a planet that shares a lot in common with Earth. The aliens sunbathe and sneeze but describe these actions with phrases like "sun damage" and "face fluid explosions." Based on Nathan Pyle's webcomic and graphic novels.

UNTITLED MAYA RUDOLPH PROJECT (Ordered straight to series)

Molly's seemingly perfect life is upended after her husband leaves her with nothing but $87 billion.