This year’s TV development season has featured a number of unlikely films getting TV adaptations including The Illusionist and the short-lived “Say Anything” sequel series that was instantly crushed by Cameron Crowe’s wraith.
But the film to TV trend won’t be stopping any time soon. Deadline is reporting that CBS has given a pilot production commitment to “Limitless,” based on the 2011 film starring Bradley Cooper. In the movie, Cooper played Brian Sinclair, a man who unlocked the potential of his mind with a drug called NZT.
The “Limitless” TV series will pick up after the events of the movie as Burger is “coerced into using his newfound drug enhanced abilities for good.” That’s the procedural angle that probably sold CBS on this project.
Related: ‘The Illusionist’ Materializes At The CW
While Cooper will not be reprising his role, he will be an executive producer of the “Limitless” TV series alongside Todd Phillips,Craig Sweeny, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci in addition to Neil Burger, the director of the Limitless film. Burger will also direct the “Limitless’ pilot if the project reaches that stage.
Sweeny wrote the “Limitless” pilot episode and he will likely be the showrunner if the project is ordered to series. The film and the proposed TV series were based on Alan Glynn’s The Dark Fields, a novel that was published in 2001.
If “Limitless” gets a pilot order from CBS, it will compete for a slot on the Fall 2015 TV schedule.
