Gay creators of
Child's Play and Desperate Housewives team
for new ABC drama

ABC has given a script commitment to Kill Switch , an hour-long suspense drama from Don Mancini, who created the Child's Play horror film franchise in the late 1980s. The drama centers on a woman who is executed for killing her daughter's murderer and then enters a sort of purgatory, wherein every week she finds herself in the body of someone about to be killed. It's up to her to figure out who the murderer will be and prevent it from happening.

Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry, who will serve as an executive producer, described it as Touched by an Angel meets Quantum Leap . "Instead of a whodunit, it's a who-will-do-it," Cherry said.

Cherry said the project marks his first venture since Housewives , the ABC hit that began its second season September 25. "I've been turning down offers from other writers right and left because I'm so swamped, but his idea was so strong."

Mancini said he took the project to Cherry because its sensibility was not dissimilar to that of Desperate Housewives . "It seemed like the fact that it dealt with suspense and melodrama--and the tone isn't exactly like Desperate Housewives , but it has humor and wit in it--seemed like something in his wheelhouse," Mancini said.

Mancini is writing the pilot and also will executive-produce. (Cynthia Littleton and Kimberly Speight, via Reuters)