AMC okays first scripted double

US cablenet AMC has greenlit two scripted series from its in-house production unit – the first time it will develop two original commissions concurrently.

Halt & Catch Fire and Turn will both go into production at AMC Studios in the fourth quarter of this year, ahead of premieres in 2014.

Halt & Catch Fire is created by Chris Cantwell and Chris Rogers, with Jonathan Lisco as showrunner and Breaking Bad duo Mark Johnson and Melissa Bernstein as executive producers.

The series is set in the early 1980s and follows the lives of a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy whose innovations confront the corporate behemoths of the time during the computing boom.

Turn is from writer and showrunner Crag Silverstein (Nikita) and is executive produced by Barry Josephson, who previously worked on Bones.

Based on the Washington’s Spies novel by Alexander Rose, Turn is set in the summer of 1778 and features a New York farmer, Abe Woodhull, who bands together with a group of childhood friends to form The Culper Ring, an unlikely group of spies who turn the tide in America’s fight for independence.

The commissions were announced by AMC’s executive VP of original programming, production and digital content Joel Stillerman.

Stillerman, senior VP of scripted development and current programming Susie Fitzgerald and Jason Fisher, senior VP of production, will oversee the pilots’ development and production.

The commissions follows the recent pilot order for Line of Sight, a coproduction with Fox Televison Studios.