FX Picks Up Lights Out, Elmore Leonard Pilots

FX picked up the pilot for Lights Out and a Graham Yost-penned drama. Lights Out, from The Bucket List writer Justin Zackham and Phillip Noyce, and the Yost project, based on an Elmore Leonard short story, mark the first pilot orders for FX since Sons of Anarchy in 2007.

Lights Out, a drama from Fox TV Studios and FX Productionss, centers on an aging former heavyweight boxing champion who struggles to find his identity and support his wife and three daughters after his fighting days, leading him to accept reluctantly a job as an enforcer collecting debts. He is diagnosed with pugilistic dementia, a neurological disorder that affects boxers who receive multiple blows to the head, which gradually will lead to him losing all of his memories.

The Yost project is based on Leonard’s short story Fire in the Hole. It centers on Kentucky-based U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens – a tough, soft-spoken lawman with a rough side – and chronicles his cases and personal life, including unfinished business with an ex-wife and his aging father. “It’s a classic Elmore Leonard story with ironic twists of fate, dimensionalized criminals and a protagonist who is himself an enigma,” Sarah Timberman said in December. She and Boomtown creator Yost are executive producing the pilot with Carl Beverly. Michael Dinner is on board to direct.