The Stetson Open Road

There appears to be movement toward getting a Raylan Given’s TV series on cable. I’m all for it but they better get Raylan’s hat right this time. In the TV movie, Pronto, they gave poor James LeGros a George Strait hat that looked like it was ready to take off. The real Raylan hat is what Elmore calls, “The Dallas Businessman’s Special” - a felt city cowboy hat called the Stetson “Open Road” - Accept no substitute.

Reported today in The Hollywood Reporter:

Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly

It’s another busy development season for Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly’s Sony-based TV production company, which has set up eight projects from such auspices as Elmore Leonard, Graham Yost, Michael Dinner, Barry Sonnenfeld and Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman.

What is different this year is that most of the projects are set up at cable networks.

Since its 2003 launch, Timberman/Beverly Prods. (formerly 25C) had been focused on developing for the broadcast nets, landing several pilots and a series order from NBC for “Kidnapped.”

Timberman and Beverly tested the cable waters this year with the A&E pilot “Danny Fricke.” Now they’re hooked.

“It has opened the door to explore subject matters that we would’ve never thought of developing for broadcast,” Timberman said. “Wanting to go to cable is often a result of us not wanting the water down characters.”

It also helped that their company is based at Sony TV, a major cable player.

Timberman/Beverly’s cable slate includes an untitled Elmore Leonard drama and “Hit Man” at FX, the drama “Fade to Black” and the comedy “Carry Me” at Showtime and the drama “Between Smith and Jones” at Lifetime. On the broadcast side, the duo has sold the comedy “Holly Gale” and an untitled medical drama to CBS and comedic drama “The Nelsons” to ABC.

—The untitled Elmore Leonard project, penned by Yost and to be directed by Dinner, is based on Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole.” It centers on Kentucky U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens and chronicles his cases as well his personal life, including his unfinished business with an ex-wife and his aging father.

“It’s a classic Elmore Leonard story with ironic twists of fate, dimensionalized criminals and a protagonist who is himself an enigma,” Timberman said.

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