Yellowjackets, a coming of age drama created and written by alumna Ashley Lyle ’07 and Bart Nickerson, has been picked up by Showtime. The duo will also serve as executive producers and showrunners on the series.
“Obviously we're thrilled to be making this pilot with Showtime, and it's been a fantastic development process,” Lyle commented. “I was a TV concentrate for my MFA, and loved my classes with Alan Kingsberg. Learning to write specs, despite the fact that everybody stopped using specs pretty much exactly as we moved out to LA, was invaluable when it came to figuring out the craft.”
Following Lyle’s and Nickerson’s original idea, Yellowjackets is a survival epic, horror story and coming of age drama at the same time. A girl’s team of wildly talented high school soccer players become the (un)lucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the Ontario wilderness. The series shows their transformation from a complicated but thriving team to warring, cannibalistic clans, while also tracking the lives they’ve attempted to piece back together nearly 25 years later, proving that what began out in the wilderness is far from over.
Born in New Jersey, Lyle received her MFA from Columbia University in 2007 and has since worked on multiple award-winning TV shows. Alongside her husband and writing partner Bart Nickerson, she wrote on the first three seasons of The Originals, on season 3 of Narcos as well as season 1 and 2 of Narcos: Mexico. The two served as writers and co executive producers on the first season of AMC's upcoming Dispatches From Elsewhere with Jason Segel. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
If the pilot is picked up by the network, the series will move to production.