His new NBC show Undercovers hasn’t even premiered yet (that happens September 22nd), but J.J. Abrams isn’t content with just two TV shows on the air. (The other, of course, is Fox’s Fringe, which is about to debut its 3rd season on September 23rd.)
According to EW.com, Abrams is currently shopping around not one but two brand new TV hour-longs for broadcast networks. The first is Alcatraz, about the famous prison island of the same name. The idea is said to come from writer Elizabeth Sarnoff, who worked on almost the entire run of Lost; Sarnoff wrote the script.
The second is untitled, but comes from an extremely popular writer: Jonathan Nolan. You may not recognize his name, but you definitely know his work: he wrote the screenplay for The Dark Knight, which his brother Christopher directed. He also co-wrote his brother’s The Prestige, and he wrote the short story that the movie Memento was based on. All that’s known about Nolan’s TV series concept is that it’s a crime/thriller (and everyone who saw The Dark Knight can attest that Nolan knows how to write that genre).
As for Abrams, you’ve gotta respect a guy who has a major career ahead of him in film directing, yet still loves television enough to create new properties for it. If Abrams were to get both shows on the air, he could conceivably have a show on all four major broadcast networks: Fringe is on Fox, Undercovers on NBC; Nolan’s crime/thriller might make a good fit for procedural-loving CBS; and maybe ABC could take Alcatraz, based on their existing relationship with Lost‘s Sarnoff.