Los Angeles, CA (January 20, 2015) – It was announced today that Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment has taken all foreign rights to a new untitled PBS Civil War historical drama, which is slated to join the network’s Sunday night drama lineup. The six-part series, which is a unique blend of hospital drama and family saga, will be shot in Virginia and is scheduled for a winter 2016 premiere.
The project was brought into Electric Entertainment by Jernej Razen, Vice President, Acquisitions and Development. The sales team, including Head of International Sales and Distribution Sonia Mehandjiyska, will introduce the series to foreign buyers at the upcoming NATPE in Miami.
“Everything aired on PBS is of the utmost quality and has meaningful content. We are proud to be associated with them on this series,” said Mehandjiyska.
Based on true stories, the new drama follows two volunteer nurses on opposite sides of the Civil War. Mary Phinney, a staunch New England abolitionist, and Emma Green, a willful young Confederate belle, collide at Mansion House, the Green family’s luxury hotel that has been taken over and transformed into a Union Army Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, the longest-occupied Confederate city of the war. As the boundaries of medicine are being explored and expanded, the role of women is also broadening. Here, in the collision of a wartime medical drama and a family saga of conflicted loyalties and moral dilemmas, the series plays out a story of the highest stakes.
Executive produced by Ridley Scott (Gladiator and Thelma & Louise), David W. Zucker (“The Good Wife”) and Lisa Q. Wolfinger (“Desperate Crossing, The untold story of theMayflower”) and written by David Zabel (“ER”), the new drama is set against the backdrop of doctors and female nurses valiantly struggling to save lives while facing their own trials and tribulations. The intersection of North and South within the confines of a small occupied city creates a rich world that is chaotic, conflicted, corrupt, dynamic and even hopeful — a cauldron within which these characters strive, fight, love, laugh, betray, sacrifice and, at times, act like scoundrels. In the end, Mary and Emma will learn a vital lesson in a country split in two and ravaged by war: Blood is neither blue nor grey — it is all one color.
The series is created by Lisa Q. Wolfinger and David Zabel and based on research conducted over the last three years. The story is inspired by the memoirs and letters of actual doctors and female nurse volunteers at Mansion House Hospital. In addition, the writers and producers have worked with a prominent group of historians and medical experts, including James M. McPherson (Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era), Thavolia Glymph (Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household) and Jane Schultz (Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America).
The series is not only set in Virginia, it will also be filmed there. Production is scheduled to begin during spring 2015, in and around Richmond, where much of this history took place.
