‘DYNASTY’ TO SPIN OFF ‘COLBYS’ SERIES

‘Dynasty,” the most popular program on TV this season in the Nielsen ratings, will spin off another serial next season about the Colby family, ABC said Tuesday.

John James, who plays Jeff Colby on “Dynasty,” will star in the new show, which will be called “The Colbys” and will premiere near the end of the year.

Emma Samms, who plays Holly Sutton Scorpio on the ABC daytime soap opera “General Hospital,” is joining “Dynasty” in the role of Fallon Carrington later this season and then will move to the new show. Fallon was to have married Jeff Colby at the end of last season but then was written out of the story when the actress who played her, Pamela Sue Martin, left the series.

Other “Dynasty” cast members also may move to “The Colbys,” according to Lewis Erlicht, president of ABC Entertainment. But he stressed in a meeting with reporters that “great care will be taken not to jeopardize ‘Dynasty.”’

“The Colbys” is being produced by the same team responsible for “Dynasty”--Richard and Esther Shapiro and Aaron Spelling.

Erlicht said that “The Colbys” will not appear at the beginning of the new fall season in September but will be spun out of “Dynasty” sometime during the fourth quarter of 1985. No time period has been selected.