CBS looks into the future, kills off that Early Edition reboot

In case the sounds of network executives cheerfully sharpening axe blades, and that iron-y tang on the air didn’t tell you, it’s apparently Bloodbath Day today, folks. That’s right: Bloodbath Day! The annual “holiday” in which various TV networks finish getting their fall schedules into shape ahead of their advertiser-focused upfront presentations, a process that usually involves killing off a whole bunch of TV shows. News has already broken today of The CW’s sanguine clearing of the slate, but now it sounds like CBS—which axed Chuck Lorre’s United States Of Al last night, on Bloodbath Eve—is getting positively pre-empetive with its kills this afternoon.

Which is all to say that Variety reports that the planned reboot of CBS classic Early Edition has been killed off at the network—which, you’d think they would have seen that one coming. (Sorry.) The series would have starred Alice Eve as a local TV reporter who starts getting tomorrow’s newspaper today, revealing the twin shocks that a) the supernatural exists and has a vested interest in our affairs, and ,b) print media is still technically alive. The series apparently got to the pilot stage, but it sounds like CBS wasn’t enthused by what it saw, and must not have perceived that particular fate as being mutable.

The original Early Edition ran on CBS from 1996 to 2000, starring a pre-Texas football Kyle Chandler as the guy who gets the precognitive papes. The series co-starred Shanésia Davis-Williams and Fisher Stevens as Chandler’s buddies, helping him to either solve the problems revealed by the magical paper, or, in the latter’s case, figure out how to exploit them for profit.

The new version, meanwhile, co-starred Charles Michael Davis, Jay Ali, and Fiona Rene. Melissa Glenn, best known for her work on CBS’s “What if all the animals finally just went for it?” series Zoo, served as executive producer and writer on the show.