Disney Channel has picked up a new children's mystery adventure series called Sulphur Springs, a half-hour time-travel project that hails from writer/executive producer Tracey Thomson, executive producer/showrunner Chuck Pratt, and Gwave Productions.
According to Deadline, Sulphur Springs stars Preston Oliver as twelve-year-old Griffin Campbell, whose family has just uprooted their lives to move to a new town and take ownership of an abandoned hotel in hopes of restoring it back to the lively vacation destination it once was. Not long after Griffin begins his first day at a new school, he learns that the hotel he's just moved into is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a girl who disappeared decades ago. Along the way, Griffin befriends Harper (Kyliegh Curran), a bright-eyed, mystery-obsessed classmate. Together, they uncover a secret portal that allows them to travel back in time, where they'll uncover that the key to solving the mystery may lie within Griffin's own family.
Sulphur Springs is also set to star Elle Graham as Savannah, Kelly Frye as Sarah, Josh Braaten as Ben, Landon Gordon as Wyatt, and Madeleine McGraw as Zoey.
"Sulphur Springs is a truly genre-bending mystery that will help re-define the types of stories we tell on our network," said Jonas Agin, VP, Original Series, Disney Channel. "It's a chilling, heartfelt, funny adventure that we can't wait for our audience to tune into."
Daytime fans know Chuck Pratt for his various roles within the genre, including head writer of General Hospital, head writer of Santa Barbara, a critically panned stint as head writer of The Young and the Restless, and a disastrous run as head writer of All My Children that many believe led to the show's cancellation. He's also responsible for co-creating the now-defunct daytime drama Sunset Beach as well as serving as show runner for Lee Daniels' music drama series, Star.
Thomson is a former writer for The Young and the Restless, All My Children, and General Hospital. She shared head-writing duties with Pratt, who originally hired her to be a script writer on AMC.
As reported in Deadline, Sulphur Springs was originally developed for Disney Channel, being described as a Stranger Things-like supernatural drama for the younger set. At some point, the project was pitched to Disney+. The development team at the streaming service liked it and gave it a cast-contingent series order. A director was hired, and Sulphur Springs entered pre-production. However, after a months-long casting search did not yield results, Disney+ opted away from the series last spring, with preproduction being put on pause and the project returning to the Disney Channel. Production on Sulphur Springs is set to begin in New Orleans in 2020.
What do you think about Pratt and Thomson's new Disney series, Sulphur Springs? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
