the history of cinema, literature and television It is full of great phenomena that at some point were rejected on several occasions before someone bet on them. This time she has to talk about one of the phenomena of spring: Netflix’s ‘The Night Agent’, which was rejected a dozen times before it was released on the platform.
This is how he tells it shawn ryan, its creator (to whom we all owe the wonderful ‘The Shield’) talking to Deadline. During the talk, the scriptwriter recounts What was the process of creating the series like? since he began writing the script based on the novel by Matthew Quirk, to which he gave something of a vidilla because “it did not give for a complete season”.
In this way, in a period of five days he wrote the script for a pilot episode that mixed the plot of the book with an idea that had been going around in his head about a Secret Service agent tasked with escorting the Vice President’s daughter from United States. He had the idea so clear in his head that he dedicated himself to writing the script directly. Once done, he and his partners at Sony began to move it to market.
almost no one wanted it
The result was appalling. Of a dozen possible houses, either chains or platforms, ‘The Night Agent’ was rejected by almost all in February 2021. All but two. The only ones that were interested were NBC Universal and Netflix.
The first, led by Lisa Katz as president of fictional content, offered Ryan a pilot production commitment and filming would already be seen if it would be for NBC or the Peacock platform. On the other hand, Netflix’s offer depended on some changes that Ryan made:
“I think the changes in attention to the Netflix notes made it a better pilot, definitely”, says the scriptwriter. Apparently, to jinny howethe company’s VP of Drama Series, was concerned that division of focus between the plot of Peter and Rose and that of the Secret Service. Something he rewrote to address those concerns.
After this, Sony and Netflix they got down to work and already began to talk about the creation of a full season, with a detailed presentation of each of the ten episodes. Weeks later, the platform gave the series the green light… and the rest is history.
In Espinof | Everything we know about season 2 of ‘The Night Agent’