Jane Espenson

Jane Espenson Steps Aside As ’Caprica’ Showrunner

Will be replaced by Kevin Murphy on the ’Battlestar Galactica’ spinoff so she can concentrate more on writing

Syfy once said it was excited to have former "Battlestar Galactica" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" writer Jane Espenson take on showrunning duties for its upcoming prequel show "Caprica." But now, that excitement is shifting to Espenson going back to her roots.

Espenson is out as showrunner, replaced by Kevin Murphy, who joined "Caprica" last month as a co-executive producer to work on the second half of the show’s first season, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Espenson is not leaving the show, however. She will remain an executive producer with Murphy and "Battlestar Galactica" developer Ronald D. Moore. Instead, according to a Syfy spokeswoman, Espenson wanted to focus more on writing than management.

"She and Kevin switched up duties a bit during the second half of ’Caprica’ Season 1," a Syfy spokeswoman told Airlock Alpha. "Jane decided to get back into some more intensive writing rather than running the room, and so ... Kevin has been taking a bit more of a lead in breaking stories as a result."

However, the spokeswoman added, this is simply "business as usual."

It "doesn’t change anything," she said. "And Jane, along with Ron and David, is still an exec producer."

Murphy was a co-executive producer for ABC’s "Desperate Housewives" for three seasons between 2004 and 2007 and was a consulting producer for The CW series "Reaper." He wrote two episodes of "Reaper" and nine episodes of "Desperate Housewives" during his tenure at those two shows.

He also wrote 11 episodes of the "Weird Science" television series in the mid-1990s.

Last September, reports surfaced that "Caprica" was in trouble after a production shutdown. At the time, Espenson told Airlock Alpha that the shutdown was more for scheduling adjustments for the Winter Olympic Games that were coming to "Caprica’s" home, Vancouver, B.C.

Mark Stern, head of original programming at Syfy, told reporters, including Airlock Alpha, visiting the "Caprica" set last month that a production shutdown was needed to take a breather.

"We actually took a break, shut down for a few weeks, so that we could, at the mid-point, regroup and say, ’OK, what have we learned from the first 10, and where do we want to from here,’" Stern said at the time.

"Caprica" is set to premiere Jan. 22 on Syfy.