ABC and NBC buy new dramas from Mark Gordon Co.

Yesterday was a productive day for the Mark Gordon Company and writers-producers Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts. They sold a pair of hourlong dramatic projects, one to ABC and one to NBC.

Based on an original idea by actor Josh Duhamel, the untitled ABC project offers a glimpse behind the scenes of a daytime soap opera and explores the loves, lives, and lunacy at an on-the-bubble series, where the antics of the cast and crew are crazier than any of the plot lines they broadcast. At a time when the daytime drama genre is faltering, this larger-than-life workplace family fights a never-ending, desperate battle to keep their show on the air, their egos secure, and their relationships intact.

Best known for playing Captain/Major/Lieutenant Colonel William Lennox in the Transformers movie franchise, Duhamel starred on the long-running ABC soap All My Children before transitioning into feature films. Credited as co-creators alongside Duhamel, Berg and Harberts will pen the script.

Entitled Graveyard Queen, the NBC project is based on a series of novels by Amanda Stevens. Described as a high-concept genre soap opera, Graveyard Queen revolves around a beautiful young cemetery restorer cursed with the ability to see the dead. At great risk to her physical and mental well-being, she teams up with a haunted homicide detective to solve a string of brutal murders in Charleston, South Carolina. Serving as executive producers, Berg and Harberts will also write the script for this project.

With these two projects, the Mark Gordon Co. has now sold eleven different shows to three different networks this development season. Do either of these new projects—both of which sound like shows that have already been done—strike your fancy?