Sex and the City Show-Runner Michael Patrick King Shops a Top-Secret New Show

It's been five years since Sex and the City show-runner Michael Patrick King last created a TV series (Lisa Kudrow's regrettably short-lived HBO half-hour The Comeback). He's spent most of his time recently in the feature world, writing and directing the two SATC films and putting together the recently revealed Oprah-Meryl-Sandy comedy showcase. But now Vulture has learned that King is ready to make his small-screen comeback, turning in a spec pilot script for a new series that's just landed in the hands of network executives.

King has been personally delivering the top-secret script to honchos. But rather than offering up a lavish pitch outlining the idea, he and his reps at Creative Artists Agency have taken a low-key sales approach, telling suits his new show is something that's totally not on TV right now and asking that they read the spec themselves to find out what it's about, a person familiar with the meetings told us. Not wanting to reveal details of the project before it finds a home, our spies stubbornly refused to tell us just what the show's about. But here's one hint: The working title may include the lead character's last name, apparently Mann (A Mann's World, perhaps?).

Anticipation for King's new project among network types has been growing for weeks, with small-screen suits telling Vulture all the way back in September that they were expecting something soon from the scribe. Nobody may be happier about the King spec than Warner Bros. TV chief Peter Roth, who signed King to a hefty overall deal last spring. At the time, it was assumed King would simply oversee other writers and lend his name to projects as an executive producer; a King-penned script would be a major win for the studio. In any case, Warners is being very tight-lipped about the King project: Vulture has asked the studio about it twice in the past two weeks, with no response each time; however, assuming the networks spark to King's new idea, expect plenty of information to start leaking out about it soon.
[vulture]