Category: News

Lionsgate CEO Says EPIX Plans To Add Scripted Original Shows

We love Lionsgate’s CEO even if he doesn’t take our BLLB (Beloved Leader Larry B)’s calls…and hasn’t for about 25 years, come to think about it. Yikes!

The following tells why we feel as we do. No, it isn’t rebellion against the BLLB it’s the fact that the more success Lionsgate has, the more job opportunities there are for writers like us. Gigs, baby, gigs! Yay team!

by David Lieberman

Jon-Feltheimer__121015230627-200x187The premium video service is performing well financially and is “going to start looking at original series,” Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer told analysts this morning. Co-owned by his company, Viacom, and MGM, “we’re capable of creating some cool original content.” read article

What Should We Expect from Comedy Central in the Months to Come?

ComedyCentralCaptureby Team TVWriter™ Press Service

We’re glad you asked. What? You didn’t? Of course you did. Cuz let’s face it. Until the New Paradigm (i.e., the get everything you want, when you want it, from where you want it and then watch it whenever and wherever you want to watch it way of doing business), Comedy Central is for many of us the absolute saving grace of contemporary cable TV.

Which is why we’re gonna tell you – in Comedy Central’s own words, of course since this is a cobbling together of a couple of their press releases – what CC is up to, both development and scheduling-wise.

Take it away, highly paid press agent writer types: read article

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 11/16/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • David Marshall Grant (SMASH ) has written the pilot for a new CBS drama series about an ex-GI cop who uses counter-insurgency tactics to try and control gang violence. (Ooh, waterboarding the Crips? Not smart, ex-GI hero dood. Not smart at all.)
  • Peter Murrieta (WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE) is writing the pilot for an unnamed NBC comedy pilot about a stand-up comedian we’ve never heard of. (“About” as in based on his life and act, and starring him. How interested in the lives of stand-up comedians are you, really? We admit that when it comes to that particular subject we’re in the negative zone.)
  • Owen Ellickson (THE OFFICE) is adapting a non-fiction book by Bruce Feiler for a CBS comedy pilot called SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES. (Ooh, isn’t that the clever title? Can’tcha just taste that delicious irony oozing off the printed page and coating our big screen TVs with…you know.)
  • Dan Lagana (ZACH STONE IS GONNA BE FAMOUS) is writing the pilot for another CBS comedy pilot, this one about a newly married couple who are raising both a toddler and a teen. (Simultaneously! Wowza! That’s gonna send the CBS demographic spinning – dizzily, we imagine. )
  • Seth MacFarlane (well-known smug asshat who used to be funny) has sold BORDERTOWN, a new animated series, to Fox. (This one’s supposed to be “a satirical look at America’s cultural shifts through the evolving relationship” between a border patrol agent and his Mexican immigrant neighbor. (Hmm, we’re seriously tempted to start a pool to see who picks the exact date the first irate viewer publicly calls for MacFarlane to be lynched. Any takers?)

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 11/15/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Dan Gregor & Doug Mand (HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER ) are developing an untitled NBC comedy about a couple of guys who strike it rich after creating a big deal mobile app. (Which reminds us, somehow, about a certain old saying: The devil is in the details. Think this particular detail will actually, um, mean anything?)
  • Peter Murrieta (WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE) is writing the pilot for an unnamed NBC comedy pilot about a stand-up comedian we’ve never heard of. (“About” as in based on his life and act, and starring him. How interested in the lives of stand-up comedians are you, really? We admit that when it comes to that particular subject we’re in the negative zone.)
  • Elle Triedman (REVENGE) is writing the Lifetime pilot, BLACKOUT (which appears to be a nighttime soap about way more bogus tragedy than we have the space – or inclination – to even mention here.)
  • Kristen Schaal & Rich Blomquist (THE DAILY SHOW) are developing the comedy AMERICAN MONSTER for ABC. (And if it’s anywhere near as funny as THE DAILY SHOW we’ll be thrilled…and, yeppers, surprised.)
  • Collette Burson (HUNG) is teaming with somebody named Anne Heche to write an NBC comedy pilot about a couple of funny people doing funny things. (Sorry, but we lost interest when we saw that Heche was now a writer and then went on to delete the e-mail announcement the second time the word “hilariously” appeared in it. Oh those crazy, zany, pushy PR folks.)
  • Rob Thomas & Diane Ruggiero (VERONICA MARS) are writing a drama called iZOMBIE for The CW, based on – oh, you guessed it – yet another DC Comics property. (Cuz the world’s been holding its breath waiting for another zombie series, right? Except the zombies. They don’t hold their breaths cuz they don’t breathe. Or do they? Time to visit our obviously-a-zombie next door neighbor and see if we can both find out…and get outta there alive.)

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 11/14/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Steve Carell (Um, remember when “ubiquitous” was the interweb word? ) is writing TRIBECCA, a satirical police show, for TBS. (This would be good news except that he’s partnering with his wife, Nancy Carell, and brilliant though she may be, LB has taught us to always be concerned when husbands and wives work together. Cuz divorce, you know, ruins everything.)
  • Robert Borden (THE GEORGE LOPEZ SHOW) is writing the pilot for a soon-to-be-named comedy about, um, old guys. (Specifically, it’s about former basketball teammates in their 60s, so expect a lot of kvetching about their bodies instead of stories about how they deal with new and interesting situations. Which is our way of admitting: We miss THE GOLDEN GIRLS!)
  • Peter Ocko (FAIRLY LEGAL) is developing BALL AND CHAIN, a novel about ex intelligence ops with screwed up personal lives, for Fox. (Um, has anybody ever ever thought spies, ex or current, would have terrific personal lives? Yeah, we thought so.)
  • Andrew Gurland & Justin Hurwitz (THE GABRIELS) are writing a Fox comedy pilot about Justin’s life. (We know, we know, you’ve never heard of him. But just you wait. He’s led a damned interesting life. Really, we swear. Or he swears. Or Fox swears. Somebody does anyway)
  • Andrew Leeds & David Lampson (failed pilot BRENDA FOREVER) are writing POOR PAM, an ABC pilot about “that friend everyone feels bad for. (Hmm, it’s new, it’s different, we could love it – but – OMG, it’s being produced by Kelly Ripa and her husband, Whatisname. There goes that one down the, erm, drain.)
  • Bruce McCulloch (THE KIDS IN THE HALL) is writing a Fox comedy pilot without a name about a mother “at the top of her professional career” who “clashes with her stay-at-home pregnant daughter.” (Which one of those two lovable characters are you gonna root for? Let’s face it, we grew up with a stay-at-home mother and our childhoods were awesome.)