CBS has ordered a new daytime drama about a Black family four years after inking a groundbreaking deal with the NAACP.
Per the series’ official description, “‘The Gates’ follows the lives of a wealthy Black family in a posh, gated community.” It’s scheduled to premiere next January 2025.
Daytime Emmy and WGA Award winner Michele Val Jean is signed on as showrunner, writer, and executive producer of “The Gates.” Kimberly Doebereiner, Sheila Ducksworth, Derrick Johnson, and Leon Russell are joining “The Bold and the Beautiful” writer as executive producers, and P&G Studios, a Procter & Gamble division is partnering up with CBS Studios/NAACP on this venture.
This is the first project that was greenlit out of the landmark agreement with the civil rights organization following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
According to the Los Angeles Times, this “deal marked new territory, the most prominent agreement ever hatched between a major television studio and an organization outside Hollywood to create entertainment content.”
At the time the pact was initially signed, CBS Entertainment Group President George Cheeks released a statement, “An important way to diversify and grow our storytelling is to expand our horizons beyond the traditional studio-producer system at the start of the pact…There is no better partner than the NAACP — the preeminent civil rights organization in our country — to help us find, develop and tell these inclusive stories.”
But as Cheeks said last year, “Neither [NAACP President] Derrick [Johnson] or I realized when we made this deal how challenging the environment would become…Streamers are now reconfiguring and redirecting their programming filters on the amount of shows they want to buy. Cable is slowly moving away from scripted.”
But “The Gates” is hopefully finally coming to fruition, and it’s scheduled to premiere next January 2025. This would mark the first new daytime soap opera on broadcast television to launch in 25 years since NBC’s now-canceled “Passions.”
Ducksworth, the president of the CBS Studios NAACP venture said, “The Gates will be everything we love about daytime drama, from a new and fresh perspective.”
“This series will salute an audience that has been traditionally underserved, with the potential to be a groundbreaking moment for broadcast television,” Ducksworth continued. “With multi-dimensional characters, juicy storylines and Black culture front and center, The Gates will have impactful representation, one of the key touchstones of the venture.”