‘Gattaca’ Reboot, Mandy Patinkin’s ‘Seasoned’ Among 4 Shows Dropped at Showtime

Chris McCarthy continues to slim down Showtime’s content pipeline.

The premium cable network has passed on four projects: the reboot of Gattaca that would have brought Homeland duo Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa back to the Paramount Global outlet as well as Seasoned, the comedy inspired by the lives of married couple Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody that had previously had a series order. Also getting the pass are two projects that had been in development — Split and Sweetness.

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Sony Pictures Television, which produces Gattaca and Sweetness, plans to shop both projects.

Showtime declined to comment.

The passes come after McCarthy added oversight of Showtime to his purview last year, giving him control of nearly all of Paramount Global’s linear networks including MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Network, among others. This week, Showtime programming was folded into Paramount+ in a bid to provide the streamer with the scale to compete with others including Netflix and Max. Since McCarthy’s arrival, Showtime has been reviewing all of its programming and has canceled and passed on a number of series including Three Women, Ripley, King Shaka, Ziwe, I Love That for You, The L Word: Generation Q, Let the Right One In and American Gigolo, among others.

Under McCarthy, the focus will be on investing in intellectual property that Showtime owns and not licensed content like Gattaca, which had a sizable commitment at the cabler and was rumored to be a favorite of McCarthy’s, with the exec previously considering it as a possible franchise for the network.

McCarthy plans to focus Showtime content in three lanes: anti-heroes, powerful worlds and diverse cultures. To that end, he’s turning Billions and Dexter into multiple-series franchises à la Paramount’s Yellowstone, with plans also rumored to do the same with The Chi.

Up next for Showtime are the final season of Billions, The Chi and rookies Fellow Travelers and The Curse, with the latter pair developed by Showtime’s previous regime.

Seasoned, for its part, hailed from Jax Media and had a six-episode series order at Showtime. The couple’s son, Gideon Grody-Patinkin, and Ewen Wright co-created the series and co-wrote the pilot about the “delightfully tumultuous relationship and life of a successful, gregarious, deeply committed, slightly insane married couple played by Patinkin and Grody — roles they’ve been rehearsing for the last 43 years. The source of their unending magic is the same as their unending woe: that they’ve stayed together all this time.”

Sweetness, for its part, also hailed from Sony TV and was from Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell, who penned the script on spec. It was described as a female-driven anthology that quietly landed at Showtime. The project revolved around a town full of grieving widows, a pair of bored schoolgirls, a rom-com leading lady with a dark fixation, Princess Diana’s biggest fan and the Internet wife who isn’t all that she seems.

As for Gattaca, Craig Borten (Dallas Buyers Club) was attached to develop the adaptation of the 1997 dystopian movie alongside Gansa and Gordon. The project was being eyed with a sizable commitment at the Paramount Global-backed cabler and marked the first new project to be developed since McCarthy added oversight of Showtime to his purview. The movie starred Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman and was set in a not-too-distant future where eugenics is common and genetic discrimination is illegal. Andrew Niccol wrote and directed the movie, which was produced by Sony’s Columbia Pictures. Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher and Gail Lyon produced the pic.

Split, meanwhile, was a propulsive dramatic thriller that takes the double-agent genre to a whole new level. Built around the double life of America-born Josh Solomon. CAA-backed Wiiip was the studio. Additional details were not immediately available.

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