EXCLUSIVE: Paramount+ is developing Zero Hour, a new sci-fi thriller series from writer and showrunner Matthew Michael Carnahan (World War Z, Deepwater Horizon) and AGBO (Everything Everywhere All at Once, Extraction). It is based on the short story by Harrison Query (The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey, Trigger Point), marking the fourth big sale for Query in just over a year.
The project landed at Paramount+ in a competitive situation involving multiple bidders. It is the streamer’s first known major buy in the genre/sci-fi/world-building arena.
It is unclear how Paramount+’s programming strategy may change following Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which puts the streamer’s content under the purview of HBO Max’s Casey Bloys.
For the existing Paramount+ regime, a genre expansion (including a new iteration of the Star Trek franchise) has been a major priority.
“As far as new things coming to the service, we want our world-building, platform-defining genre series, and that can be grounded,” Jane Wiseman, Paramount+’s EVP & Head of Originals, told Deadline in August. “In fact, we hope it is grounded because the best genre shows have relationships at the center.
In Zero Hour, written by Carnahan, when mysterious ovals appear in the sky, the world changes forever. In the minutes that follow, a wife fights to keep her ailing husband alive, a doomsday prepper races to get his family to safety, teenage runaways are caught in the middle of a bank robbery, and a brilliant young presidential aide scrambles to make sense of it all. What begins as a pulse-pounding survival story slowly unravels into a sweeping mystery, as the truth about who these visitors are, and why they have come, upends everything humanity thought it knew about first contact.
Zero Hour is produced by Paramount Television Studios and executive produced by Carnahan and AGBO, the studio founded by Anthony and Joe Russo along with AGBO’s Angela Russo-Otstot and Scott Nemes. Additional executive producers include Scott Glassgold of 12:01 Films and Query.
This marks a reunion for Carnahan and AGBO after Carnahan made his directorial debut with the company’s feature Mosul.
In a bidding war last fall, Netflix nabbed the Query-written Trigger Point starring Joel Edgerton with a straight-to-series order. Also last year, his short story Code Black sold to Amazon for seven figures with him adapting and Jake Gyllenhaal poised to star and produce. Query also co-created and executive produced the limited series The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey starring Melissa McCarthy and Clive Owen, which was picked up by Netflix in July. He is is repped by CAA, Ground Control and Jeff Frankel at Mckuin Frankel Whitehead.