Marvel, a rare YA effort, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, the closest thing to a straight comedy that the 11-figure IP empire has attempted to date. Now in its second year, Marvel’s massive Disney+ push made interesting genre swings with Ms. Written and reported by Mikey O’Connell and Lesley Goldberg And though it may seem like more folks can get a seat, I’m not quite sure that’s true.” “Fewer original works get through the development pipeline,” says Robert King, of Evil and The Good Fight,”and showrunners are being turned into employees trying to please their non-writing bosses.” Star Trek producer Jenny Lumet paints a similarly vivid picture: “We’re mid-flight, we don’t know where we’re going.

They also speak their minds over mounting concerns for where this seemingly irrepressible industry is heading.

Those who made the cut reveal the series they can’t stop thinking about, the peers they admire most ( Succession’s Jesse Armstrong remains class favorite) and, for those who’ve ditched Zoom, their thoughts on the return to the in-person writers room. But studio consolidation, libraries getting yanked from streamers without warning - looking at you, HBO Max - and shorter episode orders putting a financial squeeze on scribes farther down the food chain have added an asterisk to the idea of “Peak TV.”īoth sides of this coin are evident in THR’s annual report on the 50 most powerful, prolific and influential talents in TV, a list that becomes a bigger challenge to whittle down each year. There are comedy breakouts (see Abbott Elementary and The Bear) and behemoth dramas ( House of the Dragon and Squid Game). by year’s end, as the industry hires more new voices than ever. Upward of 560 scripted series are expected to air in the U.S. The showrunners highlighted on these pages are all too sharp to crib low-hanging Dickens - yet, for the writer-producers fueling entertainment’s most prolific and popular medium, it really is the best and not-so-best of times.

The Color Project by Sierra Abrams