Sarah Paulson, Krista Vernoff Set for ‘Untamed’ Drama From Warner Bros. TV, Bad Robot

Lesley Goldberg and Rick Porter
·2 min read
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Warner Bros. TV has lined up a powerhouse creative team for an adaptation of Glennon Doyle’s best-selling book Untamed.

Sarah Paulson is set to star in the drama, and former Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 showrunner Krista Vernoff will adapt Doyle’s memoir. Warners and Bad Robot, which has rights to the book, plan to take the project to potential buyers in the coming weeks.

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Reps for Warner Bros. TV and Bad Robot declined to comment.

Jessie Nelson (Apple’s Little Voice, Waitress: The Musical), Vernoff’s producing partner and husband Alexandre Schmitt and Andrew Stearn (via the trio’s Trip the Light Productions) will also serve as executive producers. Untamed marks Vernoff’s first TV project since she left Grey’s and Station 19 at the end of the 2022-23 season, as well as her first work after exiting an overall deal with ABC Signature.

The J.J. Abrams-led Bad Robot snagged rights to Untamed back in 2020; Nelson and Doyle were attached to co-write the first episode at that time. It was previously shopped at HBO Max (now Max) but is now set to go out to a wide range of possible buyers. Paulson came aboard the project in 2022 after receiving a personal entreaty from Doyle, which they discussed on Doyle’s podcast We Can Do Hard Things.

Untamed was an instant hit following its publication in March 2020, spending seven weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and eventually selling more than 2 million copies. The memoir explores “the peace and joy we discover when we stop striving to meet the expectations of the world and start trusting the voice deep within us.”

“Women are in a collective moment of reckoning,” Doyle said when Bad Robot acquired rights to the book. “We are looking at existing models of marriage, parenthood, religion, business, sexuality, and politics — and deciding that it’s time to let the old burn and imagine truer, more beautiful lives for ourselves, and a more equitable world for all of us.”

Coincidentally, another series currently titled Untamed — and also hailing from Warner Bros. — has landed an order at Netflix. That show is a limited series thriller starring Eric Bana as a National Parks Service agent investigating a brutal death with ties to dark secrets both within the park and in his own past.

The Bana-led Untamed is from writers Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, The Midnight Sky) and his daughter, Elle Smith. Warners-based John Wells Productions is also attached. Mark and Elle Smith and Bana are executive producers along with Wells and Erin Jontow of John Wells Productions; Todd Black and Tony Shaw of Escape Artists Entertainment; Steve Lee Jones of Bee Holder Productions; and Cliff Roberts of Syndicate Entertainment.

March 12, 5:27 p.m.: Updated with details on the second series titled Untamed.

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