Stacey Abrams Producing CBS Drama Based on Her Novel

Stacey Abrams is getting into television.

The former Georgia lawmaker and voting-rights advocate will executive produce a drama in development at CBS. Never Tell is based on a novel Abrams wrote under the pen name Selena Montgomery.

The project from CBS Television Studios and PatMa Productions is being written by Talicia Raggs, a co-executive producer of NCIS: New Orleans. It centers on a star linguistics professor with a complicated past who joins forces with a charismatic investigative journalist following the discovery of a cryptic message that's the only clue in a missing persons case. It sets them off on a partnership working cases for the New Orleans PD.

Abrams has written eight novels under the Selena Montgomery pen name. Never Tell was first published in 2004. 

Raggs, whose credits also include The Originals and Switched at Birth, will executive produce the project with Abrams and PatMa principals Nina Tassler (a former president of CBS Entertainment) and Denise Di Novi.

Never Tell joins a drama development slate at CBS that includes David E. Kelley's adaptation of Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer, which has a series production commitment; a reboot of The Equalizer, starring and exec produced by Queen Latifah; Dolph Lundgren starrer The International, executive produced by Sylvester Stallone; and crime procedural Bent, from Star Trek: Discovery co-EP Vaun Wilmott.

Abrams is repped by UTA. Raggs is repped by Verve, Sheree Guitar and Hansen Jacobson.

Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com