Moonlight is an American paranormal romance television drama created by Ron Koslow and Trevor Munson, who was also executive producer for all episodes with Joel Silver, Gerard Bocaccio, Gabrielle Stanton and Harry Werksman.

The series follows private investigator Mick St. John (Alex O'Loughlin), who was turned into a vampire by his bride Coraline (Shannyn Sossamon) on the couple's wedding night fifty-five years earlier.

Alex O'Loughlin, Shannon Lucio, Rade Šerbedžija and Amber Valletta were cast in the lead roles, and Rod Holcomb was hired as director.

All of the original actors, apart from the male lead role, were recast in June 2007 with Sophia Myles, Jason Dohring and Shannyn Sossamon.

He meets Beth Turner, a reporter for the online newspaper BuzzWire, at the scene of the murder of a young woman.

Flashbacks to 22 years ago show a domestic fight between Mick and his ex-wife Coraline Duvall over a kidnapped girl.

When Beth learns that Morgan is really Coraline, the lady who kidnapped her as a child, she goes to Mick's apartment and stabs her with a wooden stake, narrowly missing her heart, not realizing that she has become human.

Beth's boss at BuzzWire is killed, and a new assistant district attorney named Benjamin Talbot (Eric Winter) investigates the murder.

The process of vampirization also affects their genetics, causing their DNA to be fundamentally altered to suit their bodies' new state.

The story was adapted into a feature film script, and Bruce Willis was considered as a possibility for the lead role.

[39] 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.

[43] David Greenwalt, creator of Miracles and co-creator of Angel, joined the staff in May 2007 as showrunner and executive producer alongside Silver.

[46] 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.

Dohring read two pages of script featuring Josef, and was interested by the character's "dark" and "sharp" personality.

[39] O'Loughlin felt that the whole cast's becoming "a little bit younger" especially affected the character Josef, as the originally chosen actor, Šerbedžija, was twice Jason Dohring's age.

O'Loughlin supported the recasting of Josef with a younger actor due to the resulting "level of ease in that age difference".

[61] Due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, production of the series was halted by December 19, 2007,[62] and only twelve episodes of the original thirteen-episode order were produced.

[63] 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.

[66] One of the outlets approached was Media Rights Capital,[66] which is responsible for The CW's Sunday night programming, although it decided not to acquire 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.

In summer 2010, The CW announced that it would air repeats of the show on Thursdays at 9:00 pm following The Vampire Diaries encores.

Fans Christine Contilli, Elizabeth McGinnis, and Barbara Arnold coordinated with the American Red Cross, CBS, and Warner Bros for a series of charity blood drives involving 33 states, and Alex O'Loughlin became a national spokesman for the charity.

[81][84] Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe depreciated the chemistry between O'Loughlin and Myles as "artificial", and said that they "exchange lines of dialogue with a stilted rhythm and no natural flow".

Kara Howland of TV Guide gave the pilot a positive review, and thought it was a "solid start".

[34] Travis Fickett of IGN praised the actors, however, and felt that O'Loughlin did "a decent job", and that Myles was "perhaps the most promising aspect of the show".

[87] Jen Creer of TV Squad criticized the writing, but said she felt that Sophia Myles was doing a "decent job of developing her character and embracing the material".