WGN America Announces Premiere Date For Powerful New Original Drama 'Manhattan' - Sunday, July 27 At 10 P.M. ET/9 P.M. CT

LOS ANGELES, May 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- WGN America announced today that its second original scripted series "Manhattan" will premiere on SUNDAY, July 27 at 10:00 p.m. ET/9:00 p.m. CT.  The first image of the ensemble cast from the 13-episode drama was also unveiled.  Created and written by Sam Shaw ("Masters of Sex") and directed by Emmy Award-winning director Thomas Schlamme ("The West Wing"), "Manhattan" enters the world of deception, danger and sacrifices that characterized one of the best-kept secrets of all time: the mission to build the world's first atomic bomb.

Filmed on location in New Mexico and produced by Lionsgate Television, Skydance Television and Tribune Studios, the series stars John Benjamin Hickey ("The Big C," "The Good Wife") as Frank Winter; Olivia Williams ("Rushmore," "The Ghost Writer") as Liza Winter; Daniel Stern ("Home Alone," "Home Alone 2") as Glen Babbit; Ashley Zukerman ("Rush") as Charlie Isaacs; Rachel Brosnahan ("House of Cards") as Abby Isaacs; Katja Herbers ("De Storm") as Helen Prins; Alexia Fast ("Jack Reacher") as Callie Winter; Christopher Denham ("Argo," "Shutter Island") as Jim Meeks; Harry Lloyd ("Game of Thrones") as Paul Crosley; Michael Chernus ("The Big C," "Orange Is The New Black") as Louis "Fritz" Fedowitz; and Eddie Shin ("Men of a Certain Age") as Sid Liao.

Fueled by mystery and suspense, "Manhattan" is set in the 1940s in a town whose very existence is classified. Frank Winter (Hickey) and his team of brilliant but flawed scientists have been recruited to work on a project even they could know nothing about until their arrival.  Once inside "The Hill," a middle-class bubble on a dusty foothill in the New Mexico desert, they begin to sense that this is no ordinary assignment.  In fact, they are living in a town with the world's highest concentration of geniuses, yet it can't be found on any map—a place where men and women are torn between duty and their moral values, husbands and wives conceal the truth from each other and their families, the military keeps secrets from the scientists they chaperone, and the scientists keep secrets from each other.  "Manhattan" depicts the wonder, danger and deceit that shadowed the first "nuclear" families.

Glen Babbit (Stern) mentors the younger scientists and helps them navigate the political minefield of Los Alamos.  Charlie Isaacs (Zukerman), a wunderkind, becomes as expert in deception as he is in equations and his wife, Abby Isaacs (Brosnahan), emerges as an unlikely leader among the other wives.  Frank's wife, Liza (Williams) is a scientist in her own right—a botanist who has put her own career on hold to move to the desert with her husband and their rebellious 16-year-old daughter Callie (Fast), and in the process begins to uncover unsettling changes in their environment.  Ambitious British scientist Paul Crosley (Lloyd) takes advantage of every opportunity for upward mobility, even at the expense of the man who recruited him for the Manhattan Project.  Helen Prins (Herbers) is one of the few female scientists assigned to the project and remains a complete mystery to her male colleagues, including Jim Meeks (Denham), Louis "Fritz" Fedowitz (Chernus) and Sid Liao (Shin).

"Manhattan" is executive produced by Sam Shaw, Thomas Schlamme, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Marcy Ross and Dustin Thomason.

WGN America and Tribune Studios
WGN America, the flagship network of Tribune Broadcasting Company (TRBAA:OTC), is nationally distributed in 72 million homes via cable, satellite and telco, with entertainment programming including the original, scripted series "Salem," "Manhattan" and "Ten Commandments," along with first-run syndicated series, blockbuster movies and live sports.  Through Tribune Studios, the creative development arm of Tribune Company, original content is produced for WGN America and Tribune local stations nationwide.

Lionsgate
Lionsgate is a leading global entertainment company with a strong and diversified presence in motion picture production and distribution, television programming and syndication, home entertainment, family entertainment, digital distribution, new channel platforms and international distribution and sales. Lionsgate currently has 34 television shows on 22 networks spanning its primetime production, distribution and syndication businesses, including such critically-acclaimed hits as the multiple Emmy Award-winning "Mad Men" and "Nurse Jackie," the comedy "Anger Management," the network series "Nashville," the syndication success "The Wendy Williams Show" and the critically-acclaimed series "Orange is the New Black."

Its feature film business has been fueled by such recent successes as the blockbuster first two installments of "The Hunger Games franchise," "The Hunger Games" and "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," "A Madea Christmas," "Now You See Me," "Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain," "Warm Bodies," "The Expendables 2," "The Possession," "Sinister," "Roadside Attractions' "Mud" and Pantelion Films' breakout hit Instructions Not Included," the highest-grossing Spanish-language film ever released in the U.S.

Lionsgate's home entertainment business is an industry leader in box office-to-DVD and box office-to-VOD revenue conversion rate. Lionsgate handles a prestigious and prolific library of approximately 15,000 motion picture and television titles that is an important source of recurring revenue and serves as the foundation for the growth of the Company's core businesses. The Lionsgate and Summit brands remain synonymous with original, daring, quality entertainment in markets around the world.

Skydance Television
David Ellison's Skydance Productions creates and produces elevated event-level commercial entertainment. Skydance's recent releases include "World War Z," starring Brad Pitt and directed by Marc Forster; J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek: Into Darkness," starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, and "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," starring Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum and Dwayne Johnson.  Upcoming Skydance projects include the reboot of the "Terminator" franchise, to be released on July 1, 2015, "Mission: Impossible 5" with Christopher McQuarrie directing and a disaster film on a global scale titled "Geostorm" written by Dean Devlin and Paul Guyot with Devlin also directing.  Additionally, Skydance Productions launched a new television division in May 2013.  Their first entry into producing scripted television content will be "Manhattan," with Tribune Studios and WGN America for a summer 2014 premiere.  Skydance's previous projects include the award-winning Coen Brothers film "True Grit," starring Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon; "Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol," starring Tom Cruise and Jeremy Renner and Christopher McQuarrie's "Jack Reacher," starring Tom Cruise.

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SOURCE WGN America