ABC Picks up Its Own Fairy Tale Fantasy

The tradition of mixing bright-eyed fairy tale belles with the modern world is decidedly mixed--for every success like Enchanted there's a clunky failure like The Charmings. Still, ABC, which was unwilling to gamble on a third season of V, is rolling the dice on Once Upon a Time, a fantasy drama about a woman attracted to a town where fairy tales might be real by a boy saying he is her son. Of course, the fact that the project comes from Lost executive producers Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, who have experience interlacing fantasy with reality, made it an easier sell at ABC.

There's been a spate of fantasy and supernatural dramas this spring, many of them geared toward the dark and gritty. The tone promises to be decidedly different from the other new fairy tale drama set for the fall, NBC's monster-infested police-procedural Grimm.

Jennifer Morrison, a veteran of House and How I Met Your Mother (she was also Winona Kirk in Star Trek) stars as Anna, a woman who moves to Storybrook, a small town in Maine (what is it about Maine?) where fairy tales seem to be coming true. Turns out she's the child of fairy tale figures herself. Ginnifer Goodwin (Big Love) also stars as Snow White, and Lana Parrilla (Swingtown) is the Evil Queen.

Morrison said that Lost fans will appreciate the dovetailing of the modern and fairy tale worlds. "Basically, it's as if every fairy tale character ever written is real and actually exists, but they've been cursed and they don't know their true identities," Morrison explains. "They are living in our reality not knowing who they truly are. And because [of that], they're never going to have their happy ending."

"Eddy and Adam are just so great at mixing this world of fantasy and reality, which they did with Lost for so many years. The pilot really sucks you in and sets up so much intrigue and conflict."

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