Mamet Pens Anti-Terrorism Drama

By Paige Albiniak
( Broadcasting & Cable )
published

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet is teaming up with The Shield creator Shawn Ryan on a drama for CBS.

The network has given the project a "put pilot" commitment, meaning that a pilot must be produced or CBS will have to pay a stiff penalty.

The show is about the private and professional lives of an elite military anti-terrorism unit, based on the book Inside Delta Force: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit by Eric Haney.

Haney was one of the founders of the U.S. Army's Delta Force.

Mamet will write the pilot and executive produce with Ryan. Haney will consult.

Ryan has an overall development deal with Twentieth Century Fox Television, and Twentieth will produce the show.

Paige Albiniak
Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.