AMC Has Ordered a Pilot for Sci-fi Drama ‘Line of Sight’

Two of AMC‘s flagship dramas are approaching their end — “Breaking Bad” has eight episodes left, while “Mad Men,” currently in the midst of its sixth season, will likely come to a close after its seventh. Today, the network announced a new candidate that could serve as a replacement — “Line of Sight,” a drama from creator, writer and executive producer Blake Masters (“Brotherhood”), has been given a pilot order by AMC.

“Line of Sight” is a scripted drama about Lewis Bernt, a National Transportation Safety Board whose survival of a mysterious plane crash leads him on a quest to discover its cause. In the announcement, AMC describes it as the network’s first science fiction venture, welcoming geeks everyone to quibble over whether or not “The Walking Dead” could be considered sci-fi if it presents some kind of biological explanation for its zombie apocalypse, and what the hell “The Prisoner” was anyway.

AMC’s Joel Stillerman says that the show “defies the traditional boundaries of drama and sci-fi”: “It’s got great elements of both genres while also having that unique blend of a conspiracy thriller. It is genuinely unexpected and unconventional.”

Production on the pilot, which is a co-production of Fox Television Studios and AMC Studios, is scheduled for later this year. Masters, who also served as an executive producer and writer on “Law & Order: LA,” isn’t entirely new to AMC — he wrote an episode of the network’s intriguing but ill-fated “Rubicon.”