Howard Gordon & Alex Gansa Ink Big Overall Deal With Sony Pictures Television Studios
EXCLUSIVE: Longtime collaborators, Homeland co-creators/executive producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, have partnered and set up shop at Sony Pictures Television Studios with a rich four-year overall deal, leaving their longtime studio home at 20th Century Fox TV where Gordon has been for a quarter century, and Gansa for a decade.
Under the pact, the duo will develop and executive produce new series for Sony Pictures TV through a yet-unnamed production company they are launching together.
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This marks a formal reteaming for Gordon and Gansa, college buddies who graduated together from Princeton and moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in screenwriting. They started as a writing team, landing jobs on several series including Beauty and the Beast before joining The X-Files after the pilot as supervising producers. This is where the duo’s path diverged, with Gansa laving after the first season, until they reunited on 24. Gansa served as a co-executive producer/executive producer on the final two seasons of the counter-terrorism drama, which was run by Gordon. The two then teamed to co-create Homeland for Fox 21 TV Studios, loosely based on the Israeli series Hatufim, which is heading into its eighth and final season on Showtime.
Gordon and Gansa enjoyed working together again, leading to their decision to partner and seek an overall deal as a team. The high-profile pairing attracted multiple bidders, including 20th TV, with Sony TV stepping up aggressively to land the duo. No one would comment but I hear the pact is in the mid-eight figures.
The pact with Gordon and Gansa comes on the heels of Sony TV recently signing/reupping overall pacts with Kari Lizer, Robia Rashid, Hilary Winson, VJ Boyd and Mark Bianculli, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir, Aaron Rahsaan Thomas and David Matthews.
Signing Gordon and Gansa represents a good get for the studio, which has been targeting big-name showrunners to add to its roster, which also includes Vince Gilligan, David Shore and Shawn Ryan.
“We are absolutely in the market for big-name talent, and we’re in the thick of right now,” Sony Pictures TV Studios President Jeff Frost told Deadline in an interview earlier this month. “The price tags have gone up as the market has gone up, but that doesn’t intimidate us in any way, and we’re in this market for whatever it’s going to take to attract top talent.”
In a bustling marketplace for top talent, 20th TV also has been beefing up its overall deal roster, recently announcing pacts/reups with Drew Goddard, I. Marlene King, Nora Smith, Jake Kasdan & Melvin Mar and Jason Winer.
Gordon established himself as showrunner of 24, presiding over the season that won the show a Drama Series Emmy. He went on to co-create and executive produce another best drama series winner, Homeland.
During his tenure at 20th TV, Gordon shepherded a number of other series including 24 offshoots Live Another Day and Legacy, as well as Awake, Legends, Second Chance and Tyrant. For the past several years, Gansa had been focused on Homeland, on which he serves as showrunner.
Gordon is a three-time Emmy winner who also won for co-writing the pilot of Homeland. He shared his two Emmys for Homeland with Gansa. I hear leaving 20th TV after a long and successful run there was not an an easy decision for the duo but the Sony TV deal was too good to pass up.
Gordon and Gansa’s Sony pact, which had been in the works for weeks, was negotiated WME and attorney Michael Gendler.
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