Shooting begins here March 11 on NBC's "Bluff City Law," a pilot for a Memphis-based legal drama that could lead to months of television production in the city over the next year — and beyond — if it becomes a weekly series.

Production should last through March 27, according to Sharon Pannozzo, vice president of East Coast publicity for NBC Entertainment. If the pilot is picked up to become a series, the first season could begin shooting here as early as mid-summer.

To encourage that possibility, Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commissioner Linn Sitler, Film Commission chair Gale Jones Carson and other local government representatives were in Nashville on Wednesday for a series of meetings with state legislators and other financial gatekeepers.

The group's mission was to promote the idea that "Bluff City Law" be considered for the same sorts of Tennessee Entertainment Commission grants and other state incentives — some $45 million overall — that kept the ABC/CMT series "Nashville" in its namesake city for six seasons.

"We're trying to get for Memphis what Nashville got for the 'Nashville' series," Sitler said.

According to NBC, "Bluff City Law" is "a character-driven legal drama that follows the lawyers of an elite Memphis law firm that specializes in the most controversial landmark civil rights cases."

The firm is headed by a father-and-daughter team with a "complicated relationship." The "brilliant daughter," named Sydney Keller, will be played by Caitlin McGee, whose credits include story arcs on "Grey's Anatomy" and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."

The pilot was written by Dean Georgaris, who has spent a good deal of time in Memphis soaking up the atmosphere of various courtrooms, the National Civil Rights Museum and elsewhere. Georgaris' credits as a writer range from Jonathan Demme's remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" to the recent giant shark movie, "The Meg," to the NBC military drama, "The Brave."

The director of the pilot is Jessica Yu, who won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject for her 1996 film "Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien," about a polio-stricken Berkeley poet in an iron lung. Yu's other credits include multiple episodes of the Netflix teen drama "13 Reasons Why," which was mostly praised by critics but generated some controversy due to its portrayal of teen suicide. She also has directed episodes of "Grey's Anatomy," "Scandal," "The Affair" and "Billions," to name a few.

The pilot's producers are Georgaris, Michael Aguilar (Showtime's "I'm Dying Up Here") and David Janollari ("Six Feet Under"). Janollari was among the four credited executive producers on "Elvis," a 2005 miniseries that starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the young singer and Randy Quaid as "Colonel" Tom Parker.

The "Bluff City Law" pilot will be shot on multiple locations and some constructed sets. If the pilot leads to the production of a weekly series here, it will buck a recent trend in which Memphis-set TV shows are shot in Louisiana or Georgia, to take advantage of those states' cozier financial incentives for filmmakers.

Recent television series that paid scripted lip service to the appeal of Memphis's mojo without spending much money or doing much if any shooting here include TNT's "Memphis Beat," which starred Jason Lee as an Elvis-fan police detective; The CW's "Hellcats," about cheerleaders at Memphis' fictional "Lancer University"; and the Oprah Winfrey-produced "Greenleaf," about a Memphis African-American megachurch dynasty. (Also shot in Louisiana, mostly: the aforementioned "Elvis.")

There have been exceptions. Inspired by the early days of Memphis rock and roll, the CMT music drama "Sun Records" was based here, but it lasted only one season. The Memphis-set Cinemax crime drama "Quarry" split the difference, shooting its original pilot in Memphis and Mississippi, then shooting most of the actual series in New Orleans, augmented by extensive Memphis location shooting. "Quarry" also was canceled after its first season.

The last significant television pilot shot in Memphis was the Fox network's $4.5 million "Southern Comfort," the story of a Bluff City wife and mother (Madeleine Stowe) who becomes a crime kingpin after the arrest of her mobster husband (Eric Roberts). The pilot was shot on locations that captured "the romance of Memphis," according to executive producer Ken Topolsky, but Fox ultimately decided not to expand the premise into a series.

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