Series Greenlighted Without Pilot Script

Talk about a weird situation:

FOX has greenlighted a new series, Inseparable, from actor-turned-producer, Shaun Cassidy, and begun casting... without a script! That's right: the writers' strike has killed pilot season, but FOX decided to get a jump on things once it is over by moving forward without the script.

Cassidy developed the project for CBS a few years ago, but when they passed on it, it languished. He revived the idea and sold it to FOX mere months before the strike began. While a pilot script has been drafted, there is no way it can begin filming until Cassidy returns from strike. This way, when the strike is over, the show will literally already be in production.

This is one of those weird industry things many people on the outside don't know and one I guess I should cover over to Weird Ink, but I'll explain it briefly here: the actors cast for this show will be goofing-off a lot. See, they will be under contract to this show, so they can't take another job in the meantime, but since it isn't actively filming, they have to basically be "on-call." This is similar to when a writer submits a story to a magazine that does not allow multiple submissions; you have to wait until the magazine either accepts or rejects the manuscript before you can send it out again. This process can take months and months, which is why so many of us have fought this practice so vigorously. The generally agreed-upon standard now is 90 days; if you have not received a decision from the original magazine to which you sent your mss within 90 days, you can begin submitting it to other venues. Check your contracts carefully though; not all sources play by these "accepted" rules.