CHICAGO WILL BUSTLE this summer when production on both a TV series and a TV pilot start shooting around town after July 4th. The TV show is The Playboy Club, which NBC announced would be part of its fall lineup before the disappointment over the cancelation of The Chicago Code could set in.
The 12-episode, 1960s drama, from 20th Century Fox TV/Imagine TV, will air in the el primo 9-10 p.m. (CST) slot on Monday nights.
Executive producers are Brian Glazer of Imagine TV and show creator and writer Chad Hodge (Tru Calling); show runner is Shark creator Ian Biederman. Director is Alan Taylor, who directed some Mad Men episodes.
The action takes place in the multi-floor Playboy Club, which was originally located at 100 E. Walton, across the street from Playboy Magazine’s offices in the Palmolive Building, in recreated stage sets in a studio yet to be determined.
Eddie Cibrian stars as “the ultimate playboy,” Nick Dalton, a charming yet mysterious man with connections that veer on the illegal. Playboy bunnies are Amber Heard, Laura Benanti and Naturi Naughton, who aims to become the first African American Playboy centerfold.
(Naughton appeared in an episode of Mad Men when Don Draper visited the Manhattan Playboy Club.)
Side dish: A must-see doc about the young, driven and ground-breaking Playboy founder/editor Hugh Hefner is the 90-minute Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel currently running on Showtime.
The compelling story tells of Hefner’s fights for free speech and Civil Rights, amid gobs of gorgeous women and handsome men make the trip back to the ‘60s well worth the time.
THE TV PILOT, POWERS, from Sony Pictures TV and FX Productions, as exclusively tipped by the Reel in February, will spend three weeks in Chicago, with a shoot schedule looking at mid-Julyish, according to early reports.
It’s one of two drama pilots FX is eyeing for an early January launch.
Charles S. Dutton is the first actor cast so far in the adaptation of the graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oerming, written by Charles H. Eglee; executive producer and director is TV show veteran Michael Dinner (Justified, Kidnapped and The $treet), who knows Chicago from Early Edition and Chicago Hope.
The police procedural, set in a world where superpowers are relatively common, centers on two detectives in a homicide department that deals with cases involving “powers” (people with superpowers). Dutton will play Captain Cross, the head of the department.
