EMERALD CITY Gains Momentum and A Lead

Adria Arjona has been cast in her first series lead as Dorothy in NBC’s Emerald City. This lead marks a steady rise for the young actress who is fairly new to viewers. She had a stint on CBS’ Person of Interest, but Arjona’s biggest appearances aren’t even set to come out yet. Her first series regular role will be in TNT’s untitled Miami drama as well as the upcoming season of HBO’s True Detective. Clearly viewers can expect big things out of Arjona in the coming year.

Emerald City is a 10-episode straight-to-series Wizard Of Oz drama, hailing from Universal TV, that appears to be going in a much darker direction than the story viewers are used to. The official logline reads, “In the blink of a tornado’s eye, 20-year-old Dorothy Gale and her K9 police dog are transported to another world, one far removed from our own — a mystical land of competing kingdoms, lethal warriors, dark magic and a bloody battle for supremacy. This is the fabled Land of Oz in a way you’ve never seen before, where wicked witches don’t stay dead for long and a young girl becomes a headstrong warrior who holds the fate of kingdoms in her hands.”
The series is described in the vein of Game of Thrones, as a modern and dark reimagining of the classic Oz tale. It is set to draw upon stories from Baum’s original 14 books, including the lethal warriors, competing kingdoms, and infamous wizard. It will apparently be a much more overtly-bloody tale.

So far, this series has had a rocky development road. NBC had originally greenlit the project early last year but was scrapped by fall over, you guessed it, “creative differences” in the direction of the show. NBC execs and executive producer Josh Friedman reportedly had different visions about the show and could not come to agreement on them last summer, which led to NBC’s original decision not to move forward with the show.
Now, the show has been redeveloped with a new writer/executive producer, David Schulner, who took on another classic tale for NBC, Jekyll and Hyde, in the 2013 series Do No Harm. This may not be the end of the winding brick road of development problems for Emerald City, even with the momentum Schulner’s addition and Arjona’s casting has brought.