Category: By TVWriter.Com

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 10/23/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Heidi Niedermeyer & Elena Crevello (SHIT PEOPLE IN L.A. SAY) have sold their spec pilot FIFTH WHEEL, a comedy about a young woman who is the only single person in her group of friends, to NBC.
  • David Hornsby (HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN) is writing an untitled NBC comedy pilot about NASA in the fun-filled ’60s. The decade, we mean, not the age.
  • Craig O’Neill (BURN NOTICE) is writing the pilot for the CBS drama, REAL DEAL, about an ambitious female FBI agent who teams up with a wildly uncontrollable woman informant. This one’s based on an article in “Glamor” written by Emily Benedek.
  • Simon Beaufoy (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) has written the 10 part miniseries TELEMARK for FX.
  • Chrissy Pietrosh & Jessica Goldstein (COUGAR TOWN) are writing LET’S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED, an ABC comedy pilot based on a book by Jenny Lawson.
  • Lisa Addario & Joe Syracuse (PARENTAL GUIDANCE) are writing another comedy pilot called RELATED for ABC. It’s about “a working-class New Jersey community where the saying ‘it takes a village’ takes on new meaning with shared mothers-in-law and unique family loyalties.”
  • Mark Levin & Jennifer Flackett (newbies!) are developing the CBS comedy THE MAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE, which is based on, um, their website of the same name.

Whew, made it through our second day of snarkless writing deal announcements. Gotta admit that it was touch and go there for awhile, especially when we had to keep our face straight about a title like LET’S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED, and a writing credit like HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN. Not that we mean any disrespect to the writer, or to any gentlemen out there. It’s just that this is yet another credit announced with great fanfare that we, well, that we’ve never heard of.

Our Big Question today, though, is how’re we doing? Are y’all pleased with our new-found journalistic sobriety? Or are you dying for us to go back to our bad old ways? Drop a line and let us know!

Motion Picture Academy Announces 2013 Nicholl Award Winners

And TVWriter™  has the names and details…thanks to the magic of Press Releases. Check it out:

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by Team TVWriter™ Press Service

Four individual writers and one writing team have been selected as winners of the 2013 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition. Each winner will receive a $35,000 prize, the first installment of which will be distributed at an awards presentation on Thursday, November 7, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. For the first time, the event will also feature a live read of selected scenes from the fellows’ winning scripts. read article

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 10/22/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Neal Baer (UNDER THE DOME) is writing a medical pilot, THE THREE BEHRS, for CBS as part of his new overall deal with CBS Televsion Studios.
  • Mickey Rapkin (PITCH PERFECT) is writing the Fox pilot, FREELANCERS, a drama about a lawyer who loses his wife and his job and has to start over again at age 30.
  • Deb Schoenman (GIRLS) is writing the pilot for NBC’s AND LIES I TELL MY DAUGHTER, a comedy based on “the Hellogiggles column” by Julia Obst.
  • Eva Amurri Martino & Will McCormack (yes, they’re both actors) are writing the NBC pilot GROWING IVY about a dedicated career woman who invites her free-spirited mother to become her roommate so she can experience life.
  • Todd A. Kessler & Glenn Kessler (DAMAGES) have sold an untitled series to Netflix about a family that is forced to face its past when its black sheep brother returns to the fold.
  • Nicholas Pileggi (GOODFELLAS) is writing the pilot for THE FIVE FAMILIES, Discovery’s upcoming series about the “founding families of the Mafia.”
  • Chad Damiani & J.P. Lavin have been hired by CBS to retool the classic Western action series THE CISCO KID.

And there you have today’s deal announcements, totally devoid of our usual commentary cuz, well, cuz our girlfriend bet us we couldn’t, as she put it, “write it straight” for a week, starting now. We figured it would be a piece of cake, but, whoa, you can’t believe the snark temptation that permeates projects like a writer named Baer writing a series about “Three Behrs,” or the fact that people at Fox think that 30 is such an advanced age that it must be hell to have to start over, or that Eva Amurri Martino is not only writing but also going to co-star in GROWING IVY, with her real life mother, some way over 30 type name of Susan Sarandon playing the free-spirited fictional mother, or…well, we’d better stop now before we totally blow the whole thing.

Get ready for several days of dealing with yours truly’s Very Deep Frustration, even though you don’t even know who we are.

Wah…!

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 10/21/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Cathy Yuspa & Josh Goldsmith (THE KING OF QUEENS) are writing MORE TIME WITH FAMILY, a CBS comedy pilot that sounds, well, it sounds remarkably like the old Danny Thomas show MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY. (Attention, Tony Thomas, it’s time to tell your lawyers to sharpen their knives.)
  • Josh Friedman (THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) is writing the pilot for NBC’s LIGHTHOUSE, a drama about a mysterious hotel for time travelers. (We’ll watch it if the Doctor checks in, okay, NBC?)
  • Deborah Pratt (QUANTUM LEAP) is also writing a time travel pilot. Hers is called TIMELESS, and is about a woman time traveler in love with two different men from two different times. (We can promise you that neither of those men will be Josh Friedman cuz you can bet NBC has no intention of putting both series on the air, which doesn’t exactly make for close friendship between the two writers.)
  • Sheila Callaghan (SHAMELESS) is adapting the best-selling Bright Young Things books by Anna Godberson into a drama series for ABC. (We have no idea what the books are about but would absolutely watch the hell out of any show in which the hero’s name was Godberson. Or, better yet, God Person. But maybe that’s just us.)
  • Marc Lawrence (FAMILY TIES) is writing the pilot for an unnamed series about a sweet former big-deal editor who goes back to work – for her former intern. (Yeah, it doesn’t sound like much to us either, but it has Meg Ryan attached so…wait, Meg Ryan?)
  • Jason Fuchs (ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT) is writing the pilot for EXCALIBUR, an ABC series about a modern reincarnation of, aw,  you guessed it, King Arthur. (Which is really weird cuz it’s common knowledge that contemporary variations of the Arthurian legend comprise the single most frequently pitched ideas in the history of television – and they almost never get made. Good luck, Jason! We really hope you crack it.)

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 10/20/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Jay Scherick & David Ronn (THE SMURFS) are developing a reboot of the old REMINGTON STEELE private eye series for NBC, where it’ll be a half-hour comedy.  (We refuse to joke about this because, let’s face it, the punchlines come way too easy.)
  • Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein (THE VOW) are developing an ABC comedy series about a group of friends who leave the big city to live in the Mississippi delta. (Cuz the only old sitcom that’s never been rebooted/stolen/you name it is GREEN ACRES, so its time definitely is now.)
  • Ian Goldberg (ONCE UPON A TIME) is writing the pilot for COLONY, a CW drama that transfers the Roanoke Colony mystery to, um, Mars. (Personally, we’d rather see Ray Bradbury writing this – dead or alive.)
  • Mark Steven Johnson (GHOST RIDER) is writing a CBS drama pilot called GENERATION NEXT about some kind of deadly disease stuff happening in the future. (Personally, we’d rather see Ray Bradbury or his corpse do this one too.)
  • Shane Kosakowski & Franklin Hardy (RUNNING WILDE) are writing a to-be-named pilot now referred to as THE BERT KREISCHER PROJECT for a series about a 40 year old party animal who decides it’s time to grow up. (Starring – hmm – Bert Kreischer, who evidently is a 40 year old party animal who also has decided it’s time to grow up.)
  • Andy Mogel & Jarrad Paul (ALLEN GREGORY) are writing the pilot for a Fox comedy called ALL BUSINESS which seems to be a comedy about a guy who buys a woman’s business because he wants to get close to her. (Cuz rich stalkers are the talk of the town/salt of the earth now, whereas not-so-rich ones, well…