Bad Robot Series ‘My Glory Was I Had Such Friends’ Scrapped By Apple After Star Jennifer Garner Exits

Nellie Andreeva
·3 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Jennifer Garner has pulled out of the long-in-the-works Apple TV+ limited series My Glory Was I Had Such Friends, from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and Warner Bros. TV. As a result, the streamer has opted not to go forward with the project that it had landed with a straight-to-series order in 2018. Reps for Apple, Bad Robot, WBTV and Garner declined comment.

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According to sources, Garner exited My Glory Was I Had Such Friend for scheduling reasons. The show has taken quite awhile to get off the ground, and the Alias alumna is currently filming another Apple TV+ limited series, The Last Thing He Told Me, an adaptation of Laura Dave’s bestselling novel, which is produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine.

WBTV and Bad Robot are said to both be high on My Glory Was I Had Such Friend and intend to seek another home for it, sources said. The project is based on Amy Silverstein’s book by the same name which Bad Robot acquired in a competitive situation in 2017, shortly after the memoir’s release.

I hear the series won’t be taken out immediately. A small writers room has been working on additional scripts; the plan is to have multiple scripts ready to present to potential buyers when the project hits the marketplace.

Apple TV+’s decision comes on the heels of HBO’s move to scrap another high-profile Bad Robot drama that had been sold in 2018 with a straight-to-series order but had been going slowly through the development process, the Abrams-created Demimonde. The reasons for that decision were different, they stemmed largely from the series’ proposed eye-popping budget of about $250M.

Both My Glory Was I Had Such Friends and Demimonde were sold in the run-up to Bad Robot signing a massive new film and TV seal with Warner Bros. in 2019, which is now being scrutinized by the new Warner Bros. Discovery regime over the lack of big new series or movies to come out of it so far.

Another big-title Bad Robot series to get a pass includes The Shining spinoff Overlook, which was part of the company’s inaugural slate at HBO Max. The project subsequently moved to Netflix, which recently also opted to release it, I hear.

Bad Robot’s slate still features a slew of projects in development at HBO Max/HBO, including Constantine, a darker reboot of the DC Comics character, which has been going strong; a series based on DC Comics’ Madame X with Angela Robinson, Duster, which is co-written by Abrams and LaToya Morgan; and Fledgeling.

At Apple, Bad Robot has a series based on Scott Turow’s book Presumed Innocent, with David E. Kelley, which is now casting, and a live-action series based on Speed Racer, which is in active development.

Based on Silverstein’s memoir, My Glory Was I Had Such Friends showcases the power of friendship and the resilience of the human spirit as it follows an extraordinary group of women who supported Silverstein as she waited for a second life-saving heart transplant.

The series, produced by Bad Robot Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television, is written and executive produced by Julia Brownell. She replaced the project’s original writer, Karen Croner, who penned the Garner-starring feature The Tribes of Palos Verdes, last year.

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