It's full steam ahead on the first new daytime soap opera in a quarter of a century. CBS has announced a series order for The Gates. The series is set to debut in January 2025.
The specific time period, launch date, casting information, and other details will be announced at a later date.
As previously reported by Soap Central, The Gates is a joint venture between CBS Studios and the NAACP. The series will be produced by the CBS Studios/NAACP in partnership with P&G Studios, a division of Procter & Gamble.
The Gates follows the lives of a wealthy Black family in a posh, gated community. Michele Val Jean, who has written more than 2,000 episodes of daytime dramas and won multiple Daytime Emmy and WGA Awards (Writers Guild of America) for her work on The Bold and the Beautiful and General Hospital, will serve as writer and showrunner.
Val Jean will also be an executive producer alongside Sheila Ducksworth, Leon Russell, Derrick Johnson, and Kimberly Doebereiner.
While there is no casting news to date, Soap Central put together a list of past and present soap stars as well as non-soap stars that we would love to see living behind The Gates. You can check out that wishful casting here.
Last week, CBS announced that its long-running talk show, The Talk, would be ending in December.
There have been just four soap operas in production since the demise of the short-lived streaming reboots of All My Children and One Life to Live in 2013. The last time a new soap opera premiered was 1999 -- 25 years ago -- when NBC's Passions hit the airwaves.
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