Elizabeth Guider Reports: Warner Bros.’ Blindspot Strikes Chord with Buyers

BURBANK: If international buyer reaction on Monday is any indication, a show called Blindspot will end up as one of the top picks among overseas clients at this week's L.A. Screenings sales bazaar.

Buyers are never so enthused as to do cartwheels, but they did throw out a few thumbs-up adjectives in the theater lobby or outside over coffee—"edgy," "sexy" and "broadly targeted"—in referring to Blindspot.

Some 400 executives spent the day on the Warner lot for that studio's first executive presentation and screening marathon for the international contingent. Altogether 1,400 execs from around the world are in town, traipsing from lot to lot to assess the fall broadcast contenders.

Burbank-based Warner Bros. is fielding just six new scripted dramas, given that the five networks tilted toward their in-house divisions for their prime-time freshmen series—and Warner owns only a 50-percent stake in the smallest of the quintet, The CW. Blindspot was the kick-off series in the studio's order of play.

An informal survey of a dozen buyers—mostly European and Latin American—who broke for lunch turned up generally positive comments for the comic book-inflected mystery which stars Sullivan Stapleton (Strike Back) and Jaimie Alexander (the Thor movies).

The hour is one of three dramas produced by Greg Berlanti for the fall, each for a different net Stateside. Blindspot will air in the coveted Monday 10 p.m. slot on NBC, right behind The Voice.

"It'll be the freshest of the shows on air in that time period," Jeffrey Schlesinger, the president of Warner Bros. Worldwide Television Distribution, told World Screen Newsflash. (Its competition includes Castle on ABC and NCIS: Los Angeles on CBS.)

Not that buyers responded poorly to the other five dramas that the studio is fielding this go-round. Supergirl, Containment, Rush Hour and Lucifer also garnered applause and, in the case of the latter two, a number of laughs during their viewing. The sixth greenlight for the company, Berlanti's DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, was repped only by a clip, as it's for midseason on The CW. 

"Overall, I'd say the money is on the screen and casting was first-rate," said Rüdiger Böss, the executive VP of group programming acquisitions at ProSiebenSat.1, in describing the four series screened Monday morning.

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Check out World Screen's guide to the network fall season here.