Warner Bros. wanted to adapt the Zeck trilogy for a feature film and approached Henry Jaffe, who traveled to New York to negotiate with the agent for Rex Stout's estate but lost out to Paramount Television. "We finally got this opportunity," said Michael Jaffe. "I had chased the rights numerous times. One of the reasons that I never actually tried to make it as a series was that I didn't believe a network would ever let us make it the right way. Then A&E came along, and Allen Sabinson. I've known him for years and years. He swore he'd let me make it the right way. The source material for the two seasons of "Nero Wolfe" was written between 1939 ("Over My Dead Body)" and 1966 ("Death of a Doxy"), with most stories written in the 1950s. Jaffe said he chose to stick with the era for the adaptations "because I thought there was so much style that people could identify with and that we could play off. Ultimately, the most important thing is that the audience remain removed from the show by three or four decades. You can't do what Paramount did and update it and make the language modern. The whole thing doesn't make sense, because the tonal idiom doesn't play in the modern world. You have to separate it; you have to create that proscenium arch; you have to create poetic distance—otherwise there's no art in it." When the series was announced in June 2000, "Variety" reported that A&E had been licensed to own "Nero Wolfe" in the U.S. and Canada for an undisclosed fee. Jaffe/Braunstein Films, which retained ownership of the series in the rest of the world, licensed distribution outside the U.S. to Pearson International Television (now FremantleMedia, Ltd.). Producer Michael Jaffe told "Variety" that the "Nero Wolfe" episodes would cost $1 million each; sources said the full production cost would be covered by A&E's and Pearson's licensing fees. "It was a screenwriting assignment unlike any other that my writing partner, William Rabkin, and I had ever been involved with," wrote screenwriter Lee Goldberg, who adapted four Stout stories for the series. "Because "Nero Wolfe", starring Maury Chaykin as Wolfe and Timothy Hutton as Archie, was unlike any other series on television. It was, as far as I know, the first TV series without a single original script — each and every episode was based on a Rex Stout novel, novella, or short story. ...