Sep 23, 2010

Tradecraft: Finally, A Series About High School Spies

Today's Second New Spy Show: I'm not kidding with that "finally."  I can't believe it's taken this long for a series to materialize about high school secret agents!  The clock's really been ticking since Buffy the Vampire Slayer took off in 1997.  A friend of mine developed a really cool series about teen spies that was basically The OC meets Alias at the height of those shows' popularity, and frankly I couldn't believe it didn't sell.  It was a great premise, as clearly evidenced by the popularity of Alex Rider and the slew of teen spy and spy school related Young Adult book series that followed in his wake.  "Spies in high school" just seems like such a no-brainer premise that I can't believe it's taken this long for such a series to materialize.  And now, it's not really a TV show, unfortunately, but a "multi-platform digital series."  To be honest, I'm not really sure what that even means.  I can't keep up with the platforms available for digital content.  But, basically, I think it amounts to a web series, although it's coming from Warner Premiere, who I know mainly as Warner's direct-to-DVD division, so I guess eventually we'll see it on that format as well. 

Deadline reports that Warner Premiere has committed to co-finance and co-distribute Aim High, a digital series about a high school secret agent. According to the press release, "Aim High is the story of a young man leading a double life - juggling his studies by day and serving as a government agent by night. This series chronicles the life of Nick Green, a sophomore who’s just starting a new school year as one of the country’s 64 highly trained teenage operatives. When he’s not handling international spies, Nick is dreaming of Amanda Meyers, the most popular girl in school who’s cool, intelligent and very alluring." McG produces (with Lance Sloane), which is good news as far as I'm concerned.  Who better to produce a series about spies in high school than the man who produced The OC and Human Target - not to mention Chuck? (Er, and Nikita.) The series is written by Heath Corson and Richie Keen, who will executive produce along with Peter Murrieta.  Thor Freudenthal (Hotel for Dogs) directs. Aim High is already in pre-production will start shooting in Los Angeles next month.

4 comments:

Rob Buckley said...

We've had MI-High and Spooks: Code 9 over here for a while. One could almost argue that Codename Icarus was about high school spies, too, although that was more of a serial. And let's not forget the movies Spy Kids and Debs in the US.

Tanner said...

Not QUITE what I'm talking about...

I'd never heard of MI-High. That sounds potentially cool! Is it any good? But it also sounds like a KIDS' series. What I'm talking about is more of a teen/adult series ABOUT teen spies. Something like The OC. We haven't yet seen that here in America at least. Spooks: Code 9 was SORT of like that, but the whole near-future setting sort of threw it into the sci-fi realm a bit.

There have been PLENTY of such series for kids (Kim Possible and Totally Spies come readily to mind) and lots and lots of teen spy MOVIES. (Follow the tag for "TEEN SPIES.") If Looks Could Kill, Never Too Young To Die, the Spy Kids and Cody Banks series... But there's never been anything along the lines of Buffy: an ongoing teen soap about spies. I hope that's what this is!

Rob Buckley said...

MI-High is indeed a kids/young teens show - it's on CBBC which is "Children's BBC", a separate digital channel. I've seen a bit of it and it's not bad: obviously a kids show, but there's martial arts fights, etc. Judging by the tribute vids on YouTube, there are young teen-style relationships, but nothing OCish

Tex said...

Always thought this was a good idea, ever since that one episode of Sweet Valley High featuring "Blond, Platinum Blond."

Tex
(it was also the only episode I ever saw, so if they did a sequel, someone give a yell)