Category: News

Netflix As The “Frenemy”

Now that Netflix officially has more paying customers than HBO, it’s time for television land to take them seriously. And they are.

Case in point:

Panel Talks Original Content, In-Season Experience
by The Deadline Team

Netflix-panelaYou’d think a big new TV revenue source that has goosed income, built audiences and boosted marketing might be the favored guest at a show creator’s next holiday gathering, but that’s not necessarily the case, a panel of industry notables said today at a conference in Los Angeles. In fact, sometimes they spend as much time referring to Netflix as “the N word” as they do celebrating the good things it might do for their shows. read article

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…

Speaking of BECOMING RICARDO…

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Just yesterday we carried an article about the 2nd episode of one of our favorite web series, BECOMING RICARDO, and today we’ve learned something else about the subject worth sharing.

Jesenia, the star and co-creator-writer-producer of the series has just been named one of the winners of the Sixth Annual PIT/NBC Diversity Scholarship, along with Kevin Yee. The NBC & The Peoples Improv Theater scholarship is for beginning students with strong performance skills and the desire to study the craft of improvisation. read article

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 10/18/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Kenya Barris (THE GAME) is writing the pilot for ABC’s BLACKISH, a comedy about “an upper-middle-class black man who struggles to raise his children with some sense of cultural identity despite constant contradictions and obstacles” from the rest of the family. It’s based, of course on Kenya’s life. (At last! Something all African-American viewers can relate to!)
  • Janine Sherman Barrois (CRIMINAL MINDS) is writing the CBS pilot JIGSAW, a procedural about a unit that invesitgates San Francisco’s “most scandalous crimes” in decades. (In case anybody had stopped believing that SF is the most stereotypically decadent city in the good ole U.S.A.)
  • Evan Katz (24) is writing the pilot for Fox’s legal pilot, TRIAL OF THE CENTURY, about “a unique high-profile case.” (But is it set in San Francisco? That’s the question, right?)
  • Larry Dorf (OMG, isn’t he a fucking actor?!) is writing a Fox comedy about two “mismatched guys” who become stepbrothers when their parents get married,” presumably to each other. (Another “family comedy” that just doesn’t strike us as funny. When do we start getting more ARCHER type shows instead?)

  • Nicholas Wootton (GOLDEN BOY) has sold PRESIDENT X, a drama about “a former U.S. President who wakes up from a year-long coma and, now out of power, must hunt down the individual who tried to assassinate him. (Cuz everybody knows what man-of-action types our presidents have always been. Oh, wait…)