ABC picks up Marc Cherry soap opera, three other pilots

With Desperate Housewives winding to a close, Marc Cherry is tackling another group of dramatic women for ABC in a new project.

ABC picked up four drama pilots on Tuesday, including Devious Maids, from Housewives honcho Cherry.

Based on a Mexican program, Devious Maids is a described as a soap that follows four maids with ambition and dreams of their own while they work for the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. Cherry will write and executive-produce the one-hour ABC Studios project. Desperate Housewives executive producer Sabrina Wind is also attached to executive-produce the project.

Also among ABC's acquisitions on Tuesday: Gotham, from Green Lantern producer Michael Green. The one-hour drama revolves around a female cop who discovers a magical world that exists within New York City while pursuing a seemingly unsolvable case. The world goes unseen by normal humans, and takes all of the familiar NY landmarks and reinvents them in a magical otherworldly manner.

Green will write and executive-produce the 20th Century Fox Television project, with Erwin Stoff (The Matrix) also executive-producing.

Zero Hour, meanwhile, will be written and executive-produced by Prison Break creator Paul Scheuring, with Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Dan McDermott also attached to executive produce. The one-hour ABC Studios drama focuses on a longtime editor of a skeptics magazine who's pulled into one of the most compelling conspiracies in human history by a bizarre twist of fate.

Finally, Penoza -- from Twilight Saga screenwriter and Dexter executive producer Melissa Rosenberg -- centers on the widow of an assassinated criminal who is forced to adopt her husband's role in a crime syndicate in order to protect her family, according to a description. Based on a Dutch program, the ABC Studios series is written and executive-produced by Rosenberg, with Endemol Studios, Alon Aranya and Howard Klein also executive-producing.

ABC is also redeveloping Cherry's pilot Hallelujah -- about a Tennessee town torn between good and evil -- after initially passing on it.