Conception and crew Trevor Munson conceived the character of Mick Angel in 2004 and spent two and a half years writing a novel featuring the character. The story was adapted into a feature film script, and
Bruce Willis was considered as a possibility for the lead role. The script was shown to Nina Tassler at
CBS, who paired Munson with Ron Koslow, creator of
Beauty and the Beast, to rewrite the script as a television series. The series was titled
Twilight, and Koslow and Munson wrote the pilot, which Warner Bros. Television initially commissioned as a presentation lasting 14–20 minutes in January 2007. Joel Silver and Gerard Bocaccio were hired to be executive producers on the project under the former's production banner, Silver Pictures, in the same month. Alex O'Loughlin and Shannon Lucio were cast in the presentation, and Rod Holcomb was hired as director. The project was renamed
Moonlight when picked up by CBS on May 14, 2007, prior to the
upfronts.
David Greenwalt, creator of
Miracles and co-creator of
Angel, joined the staff in May 2007 as showrunner and executive producer alongside Silver. CBS had hired Greenwalt during the pilot process to restructure the original concept by Koslow and Munson, but health reasons forced Greenwalt to leave the series, and Chip Johannessen took over showrunner duties in August 2007.
Casting was originally cast to play Josef Kostan, but was replaced by
Jason Dohring to make way for a younger cast. During Greenwalt's restructuring of the pilot, all of the original actors save for the male lead role of Mick St. John were recast in June 2007: Shannon Lucio, Rade Šerbedžija and Amber Valletta were originally cast in the roles of Beth Turner, Josef Kostan and Coraline Duvall respectively before Sophia Myles, Jason Dohring and Shannyn Sossamon replaced them. With this almost entirely different cast, a retooled, full-length pilot for television audiences was re-shot. Joel Silver approached Dohring "out of the blue and said, 'There's a role, and I'm making it younger'". Dohring read two pages of script featuring Josef, and was interested by the character's "dark" and "sharp" personality. Dohring had to go through the normal audition process and was not sure he would have gotten the role without Silver, who had "pushed it all the way through to the end".
Promotion and distribution To promote the series, Silver and the main cast attended the
Comic-Con International on July 27, 2007, where the series was featured.
Moonlight premiered on September 28, 2007, airing on Friday nights at 9:00/8:00c on CBS, following
Ghost Whisperer. Internationally,
CTV began airing the series in Canada in
simulcast with the American broadcast;
Living began airing the series in the United Kingdom on February 19, 2008; and
Nine Network in Australia began airing
Moonlight on December 12, 2007, although it stopped showing the series after the eighth episode. The series finale aired on May 16, 2008, in the United States. The
Sci Fi Channel began airing repeats of the series on January 23, 2009, on Fridays at 9 pm/ET. The series averaged one million viewers per episode on the Sci Fi Channel, making it one of the better-performing acquired series of the channel in recent years.
Warner Home Video released the complete first season on DVD on January 20, 2009. On May 5, 2010, it was announced that reruns of the series would be paired with
The Vampire Diaries repeats throughout the summer on
The CW.
Cancellation Les Moonves, President of CBS, stated on December 4, 2007, that
Moonlight was likely to return for a second season. Due to the
2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, production of the series was halted by December 19, 2007, and only twelve episodes of the original thirteen-episode order were produced. Once the Writers' Strike ended, CBS announced that
Moonlight would return on April 25, 2008, with four new episodes, to be part of the series' first season. On May 13, 2008, CBS announced that
Moonlight was officially cancelled. Following the CBS cancellation, Warner Bros. Television inquired with other outlets about their interest in the series. One of the outlets approached was
Media Rights Capital, It was later reported that Syfy was considering picking up the series. Writer and executive producer
Harry Werksman said that "talks" were under way for a second season, and noted the possibility of a film. On June 23, 2008,
James Hibberd of
The Hollywood Reporter reported that efforts to sell
Moonlight to another network had failed, and that the series was permanently cancelled. ==Broadcast syndication==