Night Agent: Netflix Almost Missed Its Moment Box!

Netflix greenlit season 2 of The Night Agent yesterday, marking a historic speed update for the platform! In just six days, this Sean Ryan-created action thriller is third in the list of best new series launches in its first week behind Wednesday and Dahmer.

With Gabriel Basso directing the drama, it’s on track to potentially make it into the top 5 most popular Netflix series of all time.

“I can’t get used to it yet“, said Sean Ryan, creator of The Shield and showrunner of SWAT Deadline. “I’ve had a long career and certainly some success, but nothing like this in terms of an intense and immediate fan reaction. It seems almost unreal“.

A difficult start

This update comes exactly two years after The Night Agent, inspired by the novel by Matthew Quirk, first premiered on Netflix. And it must be said that the leaders of the streaming firm were not very impressed from the beginning.

Several elements of the original draft were changed before the series aired, notably the secret service plot was removed from the pilot for Episode 3. In addition, Italy was planned to be the main filming location.

As reminded DeadlineRyan announced in December 2020 that he was going to adapt night agent. He posted a series of tweets about his favorite books of the year and said he had decided to adapt them for television.

He combined the novel’s concept and characters with an idea he had been working on about members of the Secret Service guarding the vice president’s daughter while she’s in college, and wrote a spec script—which is why it wasn’t officially commissioned—in five days.

The original pilot script included a major plot around Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), a junior FBI agent who runs the White House hotline and receives a call from a terrified civilian, Rose (Lucian Buchanan), after her uncle and aunt are murdered. Also a conspiracy involving Maddie, the vice president’s daughter, and the secret service that accompanied her to Rome.

This script was sent to dozens of locations in February 2021. All but two rejected him. Netflix and NBCU expressed interest and heard the pitch the following month, in March 2021.

It is time for negotiations

Lisa Katz, president of fiction at NBCUniversal, who has a long-standing relationship with Sean Ryan, was very enthusiastic about the series and offered a production commitment to shoot the pilot as soon as possible in the next two months.

The pilot should have been for NBC or Peacock. In the way it works, NBCU often develops a series before deciding whether to air it on a channel or platform.

Meanwhile, producers feared Netflix was on the way. But using their contacts, they managed to arrange a phone call with Jeannie Howe, the vice president in charge of Netflix’s drama series. They said they are concerned about the changes made to the driver.

“I think the changes made to meet Netflix’s notes ultimately made it a better pilot.“, Sean Ryan admitted. Netflix liked the new version and agreed to develop the project, which left the producers in a dilemma…

They should have decided to do an immediate pilot for NBCU, but then wait longer to (perhaps) vet the series, not knowing if it would end up on NBC or Peacock, or sell the series to Netflix as a remake. That it’s moving into development where it could potentially see the light of day more quickly, with the advantage of being able to offer the cast an entire series rather than just a pilot.

In the end, Sony (which produces The Night Agent) was able to negotiate a fairly short settlement with Netflix, estimated at 45-60 days after the series was pitched, which confirmed Ryan’s choice of the global broadcaster.

He then quickly developed a very detailed pitch for ten episodes. which was delivered as early as June 2021. Netflix executives were impressed after they gave the go-ahead in August. The rest of the story is on the screens!