When Dean Devlin launched Electric Entertainment in 2000, he thought it would be business as usual. And that business produced big-budget science fiction adventure films like Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996). But the Centropolis Entertainment partner says, “It was very clear to me very early on that life was going to be different without a 500-pound gorilla of a big, huge, successful director like Roland Emmerich.” “And I don’t think I expected that at all.”
But things took a dramatic turn in 2004. Devlin hired a new agent, Brian Pike, who was at CAA at the time. He suggested I meet with Michael Wright, TNT’s new senior vice president of programming. His goal was to build the cable channel’s brand around fun, lofty, escapist fare in what he called the “smart popcorn space.”
“Michael said, ‘I’d love to do a Dean Devlin-style movie on TNT,'” Devlin recalls. But the “Dean Devlin movie” budget, as defined by most of his Centropolis projects, was over $100 million, so there was no telling what the economics would be. But this was going to be a basic cable TV movie. Mr. Wright said, “Yes, but you can own it.”
“My eyes widened and I thought, ‘What do you mean?'” Devlin says. “And he said, ‘I’m going to pay you a percentage of the license fee for the show, and if you give me the rest of the money, you’ll get all the worldwide rights, and you’ll get the domestic rights back in four years and own them forever.’ And I never thought about anything like that until he said that. And I was really excited.”
As it happened, Devlin had a script that fit the bill: The Librarian: Quest for the Spear by David N. Ticher. It was an action-adventure comedy about an eternal graduate student named Flynn Carsen who is drawn into a globetrotting adventure after becoming the guardian of a vast super-secret archive of supernatural historical artifacts such as the Holy Grail and Pandora’s Box.
“He started pitching it, and I loved it,” recalls Wright, now head of MGM+. “It was a perfect combination of clever and well-crafted pieces that were very entertaining.”
Wright considered Noah Wyle, known almost exclusively for his role as Dr. John Carter on NBC’s long-running series “ER,” to play the lead role.
“I said, ‘Well, I’ve never been burned by a really good actor, but I don’t know if he has any comedic talent,'” Devlin recalls. “Then Noah came on set and blew me away. Not only did he have great comedic talent, but he also had an encyclopedic memory and thinking about the history of comedy and different performances. I was blown away by the way he talked about how to create a scene, and I knew he was more than just an actor. He approached acting like a filmmaker would, and he ended up being a creative partner with me.”
Electric and Wile’s partnership extended to two more television movies and the series The Librarians, which Wylie executive produced, with Wylie reprising his role as Flynn for 10 episodes over four seasons (2014-2018) and directing two more episodes.
“The Librarian” series not only gave Electric a flagship series and an identity outside of Emmerich/Centropolis’ orbit, but also imposed a new business model on the company that served it well. Devlin said the company owns all future projects except for the 2016 sequel “Independence Day: Resurgence” and his 2017 directorial effort “Geostorm.” This includes a total of seven TV series, from the crime drama “Almost Paradise,” to SyFy’s show “The Outpost” (2018-2021) and “The Ark,” which will debut Season 3 in 2026.
THE ARK — “Pretty Big Deal” Episode 206 — Photo: (lr) — (Photo Credit: Aleksandar Letic/Ark TV Holdings, Inc./SYFY)
Alexander Lettich/Ark TV Holdings, Inc./SYFY
Val Borland, who is president of NBCUniversal’s Versant and is working on Electric’s Ark, said one of the things he likes most about Devlin is his close connection to the project. “I can’t believe he’s in an office 40 feet away. He has boots on the ground. And what I appreciate most is his openness to working together and trying to figure things out.”
One of the big things Devlin had to think about was how to move forward when the economy collapsed in 2008 and clouds clouded the big deal he was pursuing at the very moment TNT decided to make a second series of Leverage starring Timothy Hutton. He decided to finance the series itself at a loss.
“Every sane person I know has been calling me and trying to talk me out of this, saying this is how we’re going to go out of business,” Devlin says. “And they weren’t wrong. It was a big risk.”
Another key to Elektra’s independence is its 20,000-square-foot West Hollywood headquarters, the former home of Elektra Records, which the company has occupied since 2016. In addition to the executive brain trust and worldwide sales and marketing team, the building also houses editing and color correction suites, mixing stages, writers’ rooms, podcast studios, and a fireproof vault and basement that houses all program masters. The echo chamber left behind when Elektra had an in-house recording studio.
In 2022, Electric leveraged its content library to secure a $100 million line of credit from Bank of America, giving it more control over its own destiny.
“For us, it meant we didn’t have to have all the pieces of the puzzle before we started working on[the project]because we knew we could fill in certain pieces,” Devlin explains.
It also gives Devlin the freedom to act on his intuition.
“If Dean is excited about something, we’re going to do it. That makes things easier. He doesn’t have to be on all these executive committees,” says Rachel Olshan Wilson, a founding partner at Electric. “For example, I’ve always loved horror and thrillers and dark things. I never in a million years thought that Dean would do a thriller like[his 2017 feature film]Bad Samaritan, but he read the script and loved it.”
Olshan Wilson came into Devlin’s orbit in 1997 when Centropolis hired him as an assistant. Her founding partner, Mark Roskin, goes back even further, first working for him as a set PA on “Stargate.” Currently, Roskin directs episodes and serves as an executive producer on electric shows such as “Leverage: Redemption” and “The Librarians: The Next Chapter,” while also taking on freelance directing work on non-electric shows such as “Chicago PD.”
“It’s good for me to see how other shows are doing it or how they can do it better,” Roskin says of working as an outside director. He also “introduced[Devlin]to writers and technicians he had met on other shows and brought them on board.”
Devlin was also open to outside directors, such as former Star Trek: The Next Generation star Jonathan Frakes. He credits Director Electric with saving him from “director’s prison” by hiring him to direct the second TV movie, The Librarian, in 2006, after the failure of his 2004 feature film Thunderbirds, and subsequently hiring him to direct dozens of episodes of the Electric series, including Leverage and The Leverage. Librarian. ”
“He was kind of a savior for me,” Frakes says. He also taught Frakes how to gamble during a break from filming his third film, The Librarian, in New Orleans. “He literally taught me how to play craps and win, which is a very interesting metaphor for being a Devlin.”
And despite Devlin’s decades of experience and big hits, he still continues to pick up tips and tricks from others.
“He told me this year that working with[Leverage” creator]John Rogers taught him a new way of looking at stories, said Sam Lynskey, a longtime TNT and Warner Bros. Discovery programming executive. In addition to a logline that explains the plot, “Now when he tells us a story or a synopsis, he always conveys what he calls the ‘heart line,'” which focuses on the emotional heart of the story.
Devlin is turning his attention to more emotional fare, such as the recently released big-screen drama One Happy Family. The films include The Poly Couple, a new half-hour comedy series about polyamorous relationships, about a woman played by wife Lisa Brenner whose life changes when a DNA test reveals that the father who raised her is not her biological parent.
Devlin also discovered that his escapist fare had a surprising emotional impact when he hosted the first ElectricCon in New Orleans last year to celebrate the company’s original programming. People have come up to him and told him that going on a spaceship once a week on the Ark helped them get through chemotherapy, or that they couldn’t have coped with the death of their husbands without having a Robin Hood-like gang of criminals taking down bad guys on Leverage.
“It’s always fun to make hot dogs. I love hot dogs,” Devlin muses. “But events like this show that for most people, escapist entertainment is a very important part of their diet.”
