Author: munchman

munchman: Stephen Merchant Goes into Comedy Biz with HBO

It’s official: TV writers are stars, and can even be superstars if they treat the media right. Damn, why can’t I get a gig?

Geek Power!

HBO Orders Comedy Pilot From Stephen Merchant And ‘Bad Teacher’ Writers – by Nellie Andreeva

HBO has picked up to pilot Hello Ladies, a comedy co-written, directed by and starring Stephen Merchant. The project, which The Office co-creator co-wrote with former Office writer-producers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, stars the 6ft 7in Merchant as a gawky Englishman searching for the woman of his dreams in Los Angeles. Half as charming as he thinks he is — and twice as desperate — he’s obsessed with infiltrating the glamorous world of beautiful people. Unfortunately the beautiful people won’t let him in.

Merchant, who also explored the theme in his Hello Ladies standup show last year, Eisenberg and Stupnitsky are executive producing the pilot, which is slated to shoot before the end of the year. On the feature side, Eisenberg and Stupnitsky, repped by WME and Mosaic, co-wrote box-office hit Bad Teacher. Writer/actor/standup comedian Merchant is best known for his collaborations with Ricky Gervais. The duo co-created The Office, Extras and Life’s Too Short. Additionally, WME-repped Merchant co-starred opposite Gervais on Extras. read article

A Couple of Major Film Players Move into the eBook Biz

                   

Barry Diller And Scott Rudin In Talks To Launch E-Book Business
by Mike Fleming

Barry Diller and Scott Rudin are in exploratory talks to launch an e-book business for both fiction and non-fiction. I’m told they have had a lot of exploratory conversations and I expect an announcement of a venture launch shortly with major investment capital. The ramifications will be interesting.

Both Diller and Rudin are big players in media. Diller’s track record includes the new Aereo TV streaming service, IAC/InterActive Corp., TicketMaster and before that Fox (where Rudin became his president of production) and Paramount Pictures. Rudin is a prolific veteran producer of book-to-film and stage adaptations that most recently have included Best Picture Oscar nominees True Grit, The Social Network and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close read article

Will This be the Home of Amazon Studios?

Amazon to open a new centre in London to spearhead a global push into film and television delivery services.
by Katherine Rushton

The US firm is headquartered in Seattle but said London was “the obvious choice” for the “digital media development” centre, because Britain has led the way in pioneering on-demand services which allow users to rent films and television over the internet. Amazon’s existing on-demand services, LoveFilm and Pushbutton, were both founded in the capital.

The retail giant has taken an eight-storey, 47,000 square foot office near Barbican tube station, and close to the technology hub around Old Street, dubbed “TechCity” or “Silicon Roundabout”. read article

Mayberry and the Decline of America – Or Not?

Once upon a time, Frank Rich was a brilliant TV critic. Now he’s a brilliant, full-fledged social/political observer and just about the smartest guy we know. (Except maybe for Stephen Colbert?) Here, he combines both his obsessions:

Mayberry R.I.P.
by Frank Rich

Andy Griffith was a genial and gifted character actor, but when he died on Independence Day eve, you’d have thought we’d lost a Founding Father, not a television star whose last long-running series, the vanilla legal drama Matlock, expired in 1995. The public tributes to Griffith were over-the-top in a way his acting never was, spreading treacle from the evening newscasts to the front page of the New York Times. read article

RIP Frank Pierson

A sensational writer. If you love great, funny, serious films and TV (yes, that’s intentional) you probably already love Pierson’s work even if you didn’t know he was the writer.

Former President of Motion Picture Academy Dies — He Wrote One of the Movies’ Most Iconic Lines Deadline
by TeamTVWriter Press Service

A veteran TV and movie screenwriter, director and producer who served as president of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and the Writers Guild-West has died, Deadline.com reports. Frank Pierson was 87. read article