USA Network has picked up Jessica Biel‘s “The Sinner” anthology drama to series, Variety has learned.
“The Sinner,” for which Biel serves as both star and executive producer, is a crime thriller that follows Biel’s young mother after she commits a horrific act of violence she can’t explain. She and an investigator (Bill Pullman) take a long dark trip into her psyche to find that explanation, as the investigator grows more and more obsessed with uncovering the truth.
The pilot was written by Derek Simonds (“When We Rise”), based on Petra Hammesfahr’s book of the same name, and was directed by Antonio Campos.
The series comes to USA from Universal Cable Productions through Biel and producing partner Michelle Purple’s Iron Ocean shingle. Biel, Purple, Simonds, Campos, and Charlie Gogolak serve as executive producers. This is the first project picked up to series under Iron Ocean’s pod deal with UCP.
USA Network’s 2016/2017 pilot slate also includes “Damnation,” from executive producers Tony Tost (“Longmire”), James Mangold (“Walk the Line”), and Guymon Casady (“Game of Thrones”) and Daniel Rappaport (“Office Space”) on behalf of Entertainment 360, with the pilot directed and executive produced by David Mackenzie (“Hell or High Water”); “Unsolveed,” a scripted true crime serial chronicling the police investigations into the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, directed by Emmy winner Anthony Hemmingway (“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”); and “The Tap,” from executive producers Andrew Lenchewski (“Royal Pains”), Rob Reiner and Alan Greisman of Reiner/Greisman (“The Bucket List”), and Charlie Ebersol of The Company (“The Profit”). All four pilots hail from Universal Cable Productions.
