NBC Redevelops 'What The Dead Know' With Taylor
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- NBC passed on a series order for its 'What The Dead Know' pilot but is redeveloping the project with a new writer while keeping Taylor Schilling attached as the lead, a death investigator.
- Universal Television extended Taylor Schilling's option, which was about to expire, after the actress earned high marks during NBC's pilot screenings.
- A search is underway for a new writer to revamp the script; depending on how the redevelopment goes, the retooled drama could be in contention for a straight-to-series order.
- The procedural comes from Wolf Entertainment and Universal Television, based on former New York City medical examiner Barbara Butcher's memoir of the same name, and was developed as a potential companion to Law & Order: SVU.
- Beth Rinehart wrote the original pilot script; executive producers include Dick Wolf, Tom Thayer, Peter Jankowski, and Anastasia Puglisi, with Kevin Plunkett and Rebecca McGill also producing.
- NBC picked up four of its eight 2026 pilots to series — dramas The Rockford Files (David Boreanaz) and Line of Fire (Peter Krause), plus comedies Sunset P.I. (Jake Johnson) and Newlyweds (Téa Leoni, Tim Daly).
Why it matters: NBC passed on the project once but is betting that pairing Schilling with Wolf Entertainment — the franchise factory behind Law & Order: SVU — justifies a do-over, with a straight-to-series order on the table if the rewrite lands. For Schilling, the extension locks in her return to network drama after Orange Is the New Black, and for Wolf, it preserves a potential SVU companion piece in an increasingly competitive pilot-to-series pipeline where only four of eight NBC 2026 pilots survived.
