Breakout Kings co-creator Nick Santora has signed a two-year overall deal with CBS TV Studios. Under the pact, he will join the studio’s new CBS drama series Vegas starring Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis as co-executive producer and will develop new projects. The deal reunites Santora with CBS Studios president David Stapf. As a writer-producer on the CBS drama The Guardian Santora worked with Stapf, then head of current programming at CBS.
Santora did stints on The Guardian, The Sopranos and Law & Order before joining Fox’s Prison Break right after the pilot. He worked on the Fox drama for its entire four-year run, rising to co-executive producer and landing an overall deal with the series’ producer, 20th Century Fox TV. Santora and Prison Break executive producer Matt Olmstead went on to create Breakout Kings, originally for Fox. The project migrated to A&E where it was picked up to series and ran for two years via 20th TV’s Fox21 until the network’s decision yesterday not to proceed with Season 3. Both Santora and Olmstead have already lined up their next gigs — Santora is off to CBS Studios and Vegas, Olmstead recently signed on as showrunner on the new NBC/Dick Wolf drama series Chicago Fire.
In addition to his extensive drama resume, Santora also has under his belt a hit reality series (He conceived and executive produced Beauty and the Geek), two movies (He wrote and produced the Ice Cube starrer The Longshots and co-wrote Punisher: War Zone) and a best-selling novel, Slip And Fall. His second novel, Fifteen Digits, was published last month. Santora, repped by WME and Gotham, directed a scene from the book (video below) starring Breakout Kings standout Jimmi Simpson and Gino Pesi (Battle Los Angeles). The feature rights to the novel are about to be auctioned.
