On August 30, 2011, it was announced that ABC bought Moore's pitch for Hangtown, a Western drama series. Hangtown is the third potential venture to be attempted under the deal between Moore's production company, Tall Ship Productions, and Sony Pictures TV. The series was co-created by Ron D. Moore and former Caprica writer Matt Roberts. Hangtown is described as "a Western with procedural elements" that takes place in a frontier town in the early 1900s grappling with the development of the railroad. The potential series would revolve around the town's old-fashioned veteran marshal who solves crimes by drawing on instinct and experience, who butt heads with the young new East Coast crime-solving doctor who relies on emerging forensics and rational inquiry. Added to the mix is a young female writer who has come to the west to write pulp stories about stereotyped "Wild West" crime, to send back to big city dime-novel publishers back East. Tall Ship Productions announced via their Twitter-feed on October 18, 2011, that Justin Lin, director of several films in The Fast and the Furious franchise, had signed on to direct a potential pilot episode of Hangtown, in the event that ABC officially orders it. However, The Hollywood Reporter and Wired.com pointed out that Hangtown would be facing stiff competition, as a half-dozen other potential Western series were currently in development from all major networks as well as several cable channels, as part of a general wave of revitalized interest in the genre. (Apart from AMC's Western-genre series Hell On Wheels, which had already garnered critical praise after its premiere in November 2011, TNT was developing the series Gateway, CBS was developing Ralph Lamb, and NBC was developing an as-yet untitled Western from Friday Night Lights producer Peter Berg. Moreover, ABC itself was already developing another Western series, Gunslinger, which might affect its choice of whether to pick up a second Western show produced by Moore, similar to how a wave of new fantasy-genre series were pitched to major networks in early 2011, such as ABC's Once Upon a Time, and NBC was faced with two potential fantasy series, Grimm or Moore's own 17th Precinct. Due to this heavy competition, NBC chose not to pick up 17th Precinct for a full series.) In an interview with Wire.com on September 29, 2012, Moore was asked about the status of his proposed Western series The Wild Wild West (reboot for CBS) and Hangtown (for ABC), and stated that the projects had been cancelled. Moore said, "Yeah, ABC decided not to go with it. That was very frustrating. They made a strategic decision that they didn’t want to do a Western, period. Because they said they loved the script and the characters, and said they bought three Westerns because they were so committed to it. But at some point, they just got cold feet and said they weren’t going to do Westerns after all, which was really disappointing."
Ronald D. Moore Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth, Family
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