Ozark vet John Shiban has been named executive producer and showrunner for NBC‘s Law & Order: Organized Crime. Shiban fills the last remaining open showrunner spot for Wolf Entertainment & Universal Television’s drama series following the end of the writers strike. Law & Order: Organized Crime is set to air in midseason.
Shiban replaces Sean Jablonski, who stepped down as showrunner in March, the fourth showrunner to exit the NBC police procedural in a little over a year. At the time, SVU’s David Graziano stepped in to oversee the remaining three episodes of Season 3.
Writers rooms began opening earlier this month, shortly after the WGA reached a deal, for Wolf Entertainment and Universal TV’s three Chicago dramas for NBC, three FBI dramas for CBS as well as NBC’s Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU.
Starring Christopher Meloni, Law & Order: Organized Crime is executive produced by Dick Wolf, John Shiban, Paul Cabbad, Meloni, Arthur W. Forney and Peter Jankowski.
The series is produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, in association with Wolf Entertainment.
This is veteran showrunner Shiban’s first time as showrunner/EP for a series in the Wolf universe.
Shiban spent the last three seasons as an executive producer on the Emmy-, Golden Globe- and Critics Choice-nominated Netflix series Ozark, starring Jason Bateman and Laura Linney. He was nominated for both an Emmy and a WGA Award for writing the episode “Boss Fight.”
Previously, Shiban was under an overall deal at Sony Television while serving as showrunner and executive producer of the Hulu series Shut Eye.
Shiban began his career as a staff writer on The X-Files. During his stint on the Fox series, he wrote or co-wrote over 20 episodes, earning an Emmy nomination for writing, and served as executive producer by the end of its nine-year run. As a producer, Shiban also received a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Dramatic Series for his work on X-Files.
Shiban joined AMC’s Breaking Bad as a consulting producer in Season 2. He penned several episodes of the acclaimed series, received a WGA Award nomination for the episode “Phoenix”and wrote and directed the Season 3 penultimate episode “Sunset.” His other credits include Da Vinci’s Demons, Hell on Wheels, Vampire Diaries and the long-running hit Supernatural.
His director credits include Better Call Saul, NOS4A2 and Shut Eye.
Shiban is repped by CAA, Artists First and Hansen Jacobson.
Nellie Andreeva contributed to this report.