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Exclusive: Producer Al Uzielli has optioned Brian McDonald’s memoir Last Call at Elaine‘s which Stigmata and The Proposition screenwriter Rick Ramage will adapt for television. McDonald was a bartender of 11 years at the former famed New York restaurant and had a prime first person Pov of the establishment’s crossroads of show business personalities and notable literary figures which included Woody Allen, Kurt Vonnegut Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, George Plimpton, Kirk Douglas, Michael Caine, Jackie Onassis, and Mick Jagger to name a few.

The project in particular is a personal one for Uzielli whose father was in the Manhattan restaurant business during the 1980s and a close associate of late restauranter Elaine Kaufman. Uzielli had many meals and celebrations at Elaine’s; its focus being an Italian menu. If you were a plebeian, it was a challenge to get a table at the venue. After Kaufman...

Actor Dendrie Taylor braved her first pilot season more than 20 years ago. Each year, she recalls, she would compete with droves of colleagues from New York, who would attend a "mad" number of auditions in January and February -- sometimes two or three a day -- which would taper off in March and April. "Then you counted on the summer being your movie time and the fall being your episodic guest-spot time." But the pattern did not hold. These days the networks have a much less predictable pilot schedule. As actor Bellamy Young notes, "There are pilots in dribs and drabs all year long." Taylor, Young, and the industry insiders who recently spoke with Ross Reports suggest that the only consistency you can count on with pilot season is inconsistency. Surprises abound. For instance, in 2008, when the Writers Guild of America strike nearly obliterated pilot season altogether, Taylor booked two...

ABC has given the green light to a comedy pilot starring Freddie Prinze Jr., and the WB Network has picked up three half-hour pilots from producers Steve Martin, Jerry Bruckheimer and Brian Grazer and former United Artists executive Jeff Kleeman. Meanwhile, Charlie Craig (USA's Peacemakers) has joined the Fox drama pilot Revved. The untitled Freddie Prinze Jr. project, from Warner Bros. TV, centers on a successful, single guy (Prinze) who was raised in a house full of women and has his life turned upside down when the women move back in with him. Bruce Helford, Prinze, Conrad Jackson and Bruce Rasmussen penned the pilot script. Helford, Deborah Oppenheimer, Rasmussen and Prinze are exec producing the pilot, which John Pasquin is set to direct.

Amy Carlson and Kirk Acevedo have joined the cast of Dick Wolf's upcoming Law & Order spinoff Trial by Jury as regulars. On the midseason NBC series, from Dick Wolf Films and NBC Universal TV, Carlson will co-star opposite Bebe Neuwirth, Jerry Orbach and Fred Thompson, with the latter two reprising their roles from Law & Order as Detective Lenny Briscoe and Manhattan District Attorney Arthur Branch, respectively. Carlson will play an assistant district attorney, junior to Neuwirth's ADA Tracy Kibre, who hails from a well-known New York political dynasty. Acevedo will play a young detective who, after getting wounded on the job, is reassigned to the district attorney's investigative squad where he becomes partner to Detective Briscoe. Carlson, repped by Paradigm and manager Dennis Hatch, most recently was a series regular on the USA series Peacemakers opposite Tom Berenger. Acevedo's credits include HBO's prison drama Oz and Band of Brothers. He is repped by Innovative Artists and manager Stacey Abrams.

The USA Network limited series The 4400 shattered the record for basic cable's most-watched series premiere Sunday. A staggering 7.4 million total viewers tuned in to the two-hour bow at 9 p.m., easily outdistancing previous record holder The Dead Zone by 1 million. Its 18-49 haul beat the network's Sunday primetime average in that demographic by 130%. The 4400 was the highest-rated program on USA since the 1998 miniseries Moby Dick, which averaged 10.4 million over two nights. With 4400 and Dead, USA now holds four of the five highest-rated series premieres in basic-cable history, including Peacemakers (5.2 million) and Monk (4.8 million).

The two-hour premiere of the USA crime drama Touching Evil drew 3.3 million total viewers last Friday. While Evil led all key demographics among basic cable networks at 10 p.m. -- during its second hour -- its first half was beaten by the TNT premiere of theatrical Men in Black. Evil did, however, build slightly on its 8 p.m. lead-in, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which attracted 3.1 million. Evil lured 1.4 million viewers 18-49. Stacked against such other USA series premieres as The Dead Zone (6.4 million), Peacemakers (5.2 million) and Monk (4.8 million), Evil fell far short. However, Evil's predecessors benefited by launching during the less competitive summer season. Produced by Cheyenne Enterprises, Evil stars Jeffrey Donovan as an uninhibited detective working with an elite FBI crime-fighting unit.

John Frankenheimer's 1998 feature Ronin is coming to the small screen. CBS is developing a drama series project from writer-producer Rick Ramage and feature producer Ashtok Amritraj based on the film starring Robert De Niro, eyed for fall 2004. The project, which Ramage is writing and executive producing, has received a script commitment plus penalty from the network. Amritraj and Jon J. Jashni will also produce through Hyde Park Entertainment with MGM -- which produced the movie -- also involved in the TV project as the rights holder. The 1998 feature centered on a motley crew of outcast intelligence agents who work as guns for hire. Ramage executive produced UPN's drama series Haunted. He most recently created and is executive producing USA Network's Western forensic drama Peacemakers, starring Tom Berenger. The project was packaged by Broder-Webb-Chervin-Silbermann.

NEW YORK -- FX has renewed the plastic-surgery drama Nip/Tuck for a second season. The cable network ordered 15 episodes from Warner Bros. Television Productions with an eye toward returning the series to the air by spring or early summer in 2004. Nip/Tuck will likely restart production around the start of the new year. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. "The quality and consistency of this show speaks for itself," said Peter Liquori, president and CEO of FX Networks. "We're looking forward to advancing what has been a winning formula for us." Nip/Tuck has been a strong performer for FX, averaging 3.4 million total viewers over its first five episodes on the air. Only USA's Peacemakers exceeds that tally among basic cable original series, but Nip/Tuck beats all comers in ratings among households, 18-49 and 25-54.

NEW YORK -- As summer faded, so did many of ad-supported basic cable's original series. Despite a rash of high-rated cable premieres this summer, few of them managed to maintain the viewing levels attained in their auspicious debuts, according to Nielsen Media Research data obtained from MTV Networks for the August ratings period (July 28-Aug. 30). USA enjoyed a strong month, with three of the four top-rated original series to its name. Both the Tony Shalhoub starrer Monk and The Dead Zone exceeded their performances in July, while Peacemakers never quite matched its outstanding July 30 debut: After becoming the most-watched series debut on cable to date with 5.2 million viewers, the Western drama dropped to an average just shy of 3 million.

USA Network rode tall in the saddle Wednesday with the premiere of its forensic Western Peacemakers, which ranked as basic cable's most-watched series debut of the year to date and the second-highest original series premiere in basic cable history. Peacemakers, starring Tom Berenger as a federal marshal tasked with patrolling a fictional Western frontier town in the late 1880s, wrangled an average of 5.2 million viewers in its 10 p.m. debut. That was strong enough to make it basic cable's second best-ever original series debut, behind only USA's The Dead Zone, which opened last year with 6.4 million viewers. Peacemakers even outrated the return of the ABC reality series The Family, which averaged 4.7 million viewers in its 9-11 p.m. slot and nearly caught up with NBC's The West Wing rerun (5.5 million).

USA Network is finalizing a deal to pick up the drama pilot Peacemakers, starring Tom Berenger, as a series to premiere in the summer, sources said. Peacemakers, a Western cop show, is one of three drama pilots USA greenlighted in August (HR 8/22). Sources said the other two -- Touching Evil, starring Jeffrey Donovan, and Thought Crimes, starring Navi Rawat -- remain strong contenders, with a good chance that one or both of them will be picked up for January launch. Peacemakers, set in 1881, when modern crime-fighting techniques came to the Old West, was created by Rick Ramage and Larry Carroll, written by Ramage and directed by Carroll. Ramage is executive producer, with Carroll co-executive producing.

Tom Berenger has been tapped to do a four-episode arc on NBC's drama Third Watch. He will play a famous, hard-living author/journalist who becomes romantically involved with Kim Zambrano (Kim Raver) in the series from John Wells Prods. and Warner Bros. Television. Berenger is replacing Tom Selleck, who was originally slated to do the arc but has pulled out, focusing his attention on his comedy pilot for NBC that was recently picked up. Berenger was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Platoon. His credits also include the feature Training Day, Hallmark Channel's miniseries Johnson County War and ESPN's telefilm Junction Boys. The actor, who stars in USA Network's pilot Peacemakers, is repped by CAA.