8:30 a.m. September 11, 2001: NBC Team near WTC, Working on Drama Series about Terrorist Attacks in New York

A group from NBC is in New York, near the World Trade Center, doing preparatory work for a drama miniseries about al-Qaeda committing a series of terrorist attacks in the city. [Variety, 9/10/2001; Hollywood, Health and Society, 4/2/2002 ; CNN, 9/9/2002; USA Today, 12/5/2002] The big-budget five-hour miniseries, called Terror, will combine the casts of all three of NBC’s Law & Order crime drama series: the original show, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. It is intended to be broadcast in May 2002. Its storyline follows a devotee of Osama bin Laden who goes from an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan to New York. There, he sets off explosives in the subway under Times Square, killing over 1,000 people. A bioterrorist release of anthrax is subsequently discovered. [Variety, 9/10/2001; Los Angeles, 4/2002; USA Today, 12/5/2002]
Group Doing Planning Work for Show – This morning, Neal Baer, one of Law & Order’s executive producers, is in New York with some of his colleagues, doing preproduction planning for Terror. The group is at a facility at Chelsea Piers, on Manhattan’s West Side, only a couple of miles from the WTC. Baer and his colleagues are “ironing out details” for the miniseries, according to CNN. After the attacks on the WTC take place, they will watch in shock as people run up the West Side Highway, “first panicky groups fleeing the initial hit, then ash-covered survivors of the towers’ collapse.” [Hollywood, Health and Society, 4/2/2002 ; CNN, 9/9/2002]
Magazine Has Front-Page Story about Show – Writers have been working on Terror for several months (see June-September 11, 2001) and filming is scheduled to begin later this month. [Los Angeles, 4/2002; Hollywood, Health and Society, 4/2/2002 ] This morning, Variety magazine even has a front-page story about the miniseries. [Variety, 9/10/2001; CNN, 9/9/2002] But Terror will be canceled less than a week after the 9/11 attacks. The show’s producers will say that it would be “[i]nappropriate to produce the Law & Order miniseries dealing with terrorists, dealing with terrorism, in light of the horrifying events that have unfolded over the past week.” [Variety, 9/17/2001]