ALL: Proposed Soaps Over The Years

[Soaplovers]

I'm wondering if these movies to soap proposals were going to be more like a telenovela where it would be 3 to 6 months per soap?

[SteelCity]

Like Ryan Murphy?

[j swift]

I hadn't thought of that, you're exactly correct

[SteelCity]

I do think it's cool in certain aspects. I just think he's a bit of a hack sometimes.

[1974mdp]

I wonder how far along the proposed Marlena spinoff from DAYS made it along in development. I think the current DAYS version is ripe for a spin-off with more episodes versus Beyond Salem. It would be great to see a version that took riskier storyline routes and was more adult...and maybe not so much Si-Fi that we get now. They could pull at Port Charles and even use some of the same sets.

And the FOX audience would have been a better fit for Sunset Beach, too. Fox probably would have given the show more time to grow and find its footing, too.

[Liberty City]

Oh, definitely, especially given how successful 90210 was for the network.

[te.]

Pilot for Born in the USA (aka This Land), a proposed half hour soap for FOX in the 2007-08 season by Mal Young and was supposed to air a few nights per week if picked up, has leaked:

 

Interesting that this made it all the way to pilot stage to be honest. I'm not sure how Fox would've scheduled a half hour soap in that season.

 

Futon Critic development page: http://thefutoncritic.com/devwatch/born-in-the-usa/

 

@SteelCity lol don't know who else to @. 

Edited August 19, 2023 by te.

[te.]

@Toups @Errol a soap pilot leaks online (how often does that happen?)

[Sapounopera]

This is clearly modeled after the UK soaps and this is what poor Ellen Wheeler was going for on GL. I guess they should have hired someone like Mal Young if they were going for this.

[Chris B]

I seem to remember Fox developing a remake of Eastenders. I wonder if this is what they came up with. I found it to be very promising. It’s so shocking to see them attempt a US version of a UK soap.  
 

I loved the community feel, variety of ages featured and how quickly it moved. If they ever launched another soap, I’d love for it to be in this format airing 2-3 times a week. 

[te.]

Indeed it was - Simon Fuller / 19 Entertainment produced it (aka the production company behind American Idol) so I assume that at least one edition of the show would've aired there, especially as they sometimes had 1,5 hours / 30 minute result shows. I'd assume the issue would've been to find another appropriate place on the schedule. And of course, Mal Young was an Eastenders producer.

 

I'd be interested to see ABC tackle something similiar though - especially as they have a lot of reality shows that might be cut down to pair it with - ie have a 1,5 hour version of American Idol / DWTS / Bachelor + a potential half hour results show of any of those and you'd have a decent pairing. Won't happen, but it would be the most ideal situation.

Edited August 22, 2023 by te.

[SteelCity]

I do actually remember reading this somewhere in the soap mags. I guess it came to fruition.

[Paul Raven]

4 March 1994 

This surely would have strong soap elements and continuing stories if not strictly a serial.

Elizabeth Taylor may be bringing her big-screen movie glamour to television as star of a new series, "Daughters of Eve." Paramount Television Group is negotiating with Taylor to make her first continuing primetime TV role in the dramatic series now under development, said a company spokesman. In the series, Taylor would play a wealthy woman with a past whose three daughters are now creating their own splash in New York, London and Paris society. Taylor, who did a brief acting stint in 1981 on the daytime serial "General Hospital," would be paid close to $125,000 per episode, the trade paper Daily Variety reported Thursday.

[Paul Raven]

1976

The Glass Heart AKA To Love and Be Loved

Larry White Productions,Columbia Pictures Television. WRITER: Gabrielle Upton

 A soap opera about Tamara Tabor, her troubled family, and the Rolling Hills Hospital

A Girl Named Jo AKA Girl Alone

Writers -  John Pickard/Frank Provo
 A proposed daily soap opera. Tear-jerking saga of a Midwestern girl named Jo Merrill, come to New York to be an actress. Mentions Wendy Warren and the News radio program, so was probably proposed soon after the close of that show (1958).

Sharla AKA Beggars and Choosers
. PROD. CO.: EMI Television. •
Unsold mini-series follows seventeen years of the life of Sharla Taylor, daughter of Hungarian immigrants, making it big in the world of professional beauty.
 SCRIPT DATE: 03-02-1978.
WRITER: Hess, John D.; Nixon, Agnes.

More info on Agnes Nixons primetime soap originally scheduled to air June 77 but dropped at the last minute. seems at this point (march 78) they were trying to fashion it into a miniseries.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Paul Raven

[Paul Raven]

This Moment of Time
Writers  John Pickard/Frank Provo

Show was a hybrid of Pickard and Provo’s Wendy Warren and the News and Concerning Miss Marlowe. It incorporates characters from both, and the five scripts  are virtual duplicates of the five scripts in the unsold TV version of the popular radio series Wendy Warrenand the News. Set in 1966 with Julie Allen, a TV personality,who we see both in front of the camera as a newswoman and in her personal life.

1977 Wings of Love
Aaron Spelling Productions.
 Proposed daytime soap opera about love among stewardesses and pilots, and
their families and friends.

 PRODUCER:Aaron Spelling Douglas S Cramer (executive);
WRITERS: Stephen/Elinor Karpf,