The massive success History had with The Bible miniseries in 2013 was a road to Damascus moment in many ways for broadcasters and Hollywood studios. While Mel Gibson had hit big box office with The Passion Of The Christ in 2004, faith-based productions weren’t heavily explored by the industry until Mark Burnett and Rom…

Debuting appropriately on Easter Sunday on NBC, the latest Bible-based epic from Mark Burnett and Roma Downey will face a very busy April 5 with the return of Mad Men on AMC, the debut of Wolf Hall on PBS and the premiere of its own lead-out American Odyssey, and of course ABC’s annual broadcast of The Ten Commandments…

God scheduled A.D. – the sequel to Mark Burnett and Roma Downey's hit miniseries The Bible – on Easter Sunday, Burnett told TCA critics this afternoon. "We couldn't make it any faster," he said at Winter TV Press Tour 2015, explaining that, 18 months ago, NBC Entertainment chief Bob Greenblatt asked him if there was a…

Mark Burnett and Roma Downey’ have assembled the cast for their 12-episode NBC event series A.D., set to premiere Easter Sunday, April 5. Richard Coyle (Crossbones), Vincent Regan (The Musketeers), Adam Levy (Borgia), Juan Pablo di Pace (Dallas), Emmet Scanlan (Constantine), Chipo Chung (Sherlock), Jodhi May (The Crims…

Reality Check is a Deadline feature series covering the players, programs and trends in reality television. Since Survivor first debuted on CBS in the summer of 2000, Mark Burnett has been and remains one of the leading impresarios of the Reality TV genre that he in many ways created Stateside. Sure Burnett's had…

History‘s Vikings returned for its second season at 10 PM last night, capturing 3.6 million viewers — including 1.7 million  adults 18-49, of whom 1.1 million were guys,  and 1.8 million adults 25-54, of whom 1.2 million were men. Vikings’  first season launch had clocked a whopping 6.2 million viewers — 2.5 million…

Russell Crowe stars as the biblical hero in Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah, which will make an appearance during the Super Bowl nearly two months before it hits theaters. Word is the pic from the Black Swan helmer isn’t your grandpa’s kind of Bible study (or even Mark Burnett’s) but a dark, existential take on the Ark saga…

The year 2013 was so jam-packed with TV controversies that, after Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson this month left A&E looking more or less like the spot marked with chalk where the accident had occurred, exhausted Reporters Who Cover Television slumped over in a surfeited sort of coma. Here’s a look at some of…

NBC has given a formal green light to 12-hour miniseries A.D., Mark Burnett and Roma Downey‘s follow-up to their highly rated miniseries The Bible that aired on History earlier this year. The project, produced by LightWorkers Media with Burnett, Downey and Richard Bedser serving as executive producers, is eyeing a…

The miniseries’ second night viewership across A+E Networks‘ History, A&E and Lifetime, was down 24% from Night One. Of the 7.4 million viewers, 3.1 million fell into the 25-54 age bracket. On History, the miniseries, starring Emile Hirsch and Holliday Grainger in the title roles,  logged 2.8 million viewers overall; L…

Mark Burnett and Roma Downey — the new It Couple of TV Miniseries/Event Series — have landed CBS‘ first announced project from its new limited series and event programming unit. And yes, it’s an historical series with religious overtones. The Dovekeepers is a four-hour miniseries based in Alice Hoffman’s historical…

The next phase of Mark Burnett‘s The Bible-will-conquer-the-world plan is 20th Century Fox‘s feature-length film cut of the 10-part History Channel miniseries. The studio acquired rights to Son Of God in September and will release it February 28, 2014. At the Produced By Conference in June, Burnett said: "Just on the…