Munsters reboot ‘MOCKINGBIRD LANE’ no longer a series, but a TV special

If you haven’t been keeping up with the NBC drama of the reboot of The Munsters titled Mockingbird Lane well, we will give it to you straight.

Writer/Producer Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies) and director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) have been working for years on a reboot of The Munsters for NBC. 2011 came around and the current chairman for NBC, Bob Greenblatt, started taking the project under his wing and tweaked it to what he thought would do really well for the show. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fuller & Singer “had differing opinions about the style of the pilot, and the final version is said to have come in below the network’s expectations.” It is also reported that the pilot alone cost NBC/Universal $10 million to make. Obviously a lot was riding on this. They could either plunge more money into the project as a series (said to be a 13 episode series which would cost roughly $100-130 million) or they could cut their losses. It looks like NBC has decided to do the latter due to Bryan Fuller now working on the 13-episode series of Hannibal for NBC and Fuller’s devotion, time and energy being focused on Hannibal. Of course now that Mockingbird Lane has been talked about the major media and given the fact that Fuller and Singer’s names were attached, there is interest by the public. Not only is it a reboot of a famous TV show but it was handled by people respected by Hollywood and general mass. If it was a pilot of a new show it simply wouldn’t see the light of day. However, given the high profile status of the thing, NBC is going to run the Mockingbird Lane pilot as a Halloween Special on October 26th at 8pm (Eastern, I presume) before NBC’s tv show Grimm.

NBC has declined to comment. I’m personally torn on the decision. I really wasn’t enthusiastic about the reboot but I like Fuller’s involvement in TV and Singer being brought on board to at least direct the pilot definitely interested me. I’m worried that this version will be pretty different and might not work as a special. It also runs the risk of maybe being so good that people may clamor for more but will not receive it. Needless to say, I think a lot of horror fans will still be watching NBC later this month when it airs. Of course, there is still the possibility that if the pilot-now-Halloween-Special does well, NBC might order more episodes to actually make it into the initially intended TV series.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter