Turner Network Television's upcoming original-movie slate features action flicks and a Western,
along with a remake of a big-screen classic.
The network unveiled plans Tuesday for 11 new original productions, which
will roll out beginning early 2004.
In the action genre, TNT is hatching biopic Evel Knievel based on
a book about the daredevil's life. Action drama SWAT will focus on police SWAT
squads working among the civil unrest in Los Angeles in the
1960s.
Action mastermind Jan de Bont, whose credits include Speed and
Twister, will
executive-produce.
And TNT is turning Ken Follett's
best-selling World War II thriller, Night Over Water, into a made-for-TV action drama.
On the Western front, TNT will tell the story of notorious American outlaw
Jesse James in I, Jesse James, based on a book by his great-great
grandson.
Female-targeted fare is headlined by a remake of The Goodbye Girl, co-produced by corporate cousin Warner Bros. Television.
ER star Julianna
Margulies will star and co-produce Where Is the Mango Princess as a woman
trying to hold her family together as her husband suffers a brain injury.
TNT's next co-produced project with Johnson & Johnson -- designed
as family viewing movies -- will be Honus & Me, about a young boy
who finds a Honus Wagner baseball card and travels in time to meet the
legend.
