Rebecca Sugar Is Cartoon Network’s First Solo Woman Show Creator – by Amid Amidi
I don’t know how I missed this press release, but last month, Cartoon Network announced that they will produce two new series: Peter Browngardt’s Uncle Grandpa, based on a popular pilot of the same name that Browngardt made a few years ago, and Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe.
The latter announcement is particularly significant for an ignominious reason: this marks the first time in Cartoon Network’s twenty-year history that they have greenlit a children’s entertainment series created by a solo woman creator. It’s a little too early to start celebrating the fact that Cartoon Network is producing a show by a woman, but it does represent a baby step in the right direction.
Sugar is also among the new generation of creators who established a reputation online before attracting the attention of the animation industry. Contrast this to the path of animation creators past (Seth MacFarlane, Genndy Tartakovsky, John Kricfalusi) when artists remained largely anonymous to the public before being made famous by their shows. It’s a turning point in animation culture—artists no longer need the reach of a network to establish a fanbase, and further, networks now mostly react to trending artists instead of launch new careers.
Category: News
Today’s TV Writing Deals Dept: 10/8/12
Insert unappreciated writer joke here and move on to:
- Krista Vernoff (GREY’S ANATOMY) is writing and producing a musical dramedy about a top songwriter specializing in love songs even though she’s unlucky in love for NBC. (Cuz the network knows we all want to watch shows about people doing better than we are. Or about people doing worse. Talk about covering all the bases.)
- Kate Walsh (PRIVATE PRACTICE) & Chris Case (RETIRED AT 35) are co-writing what’s described as a “semi-autobiographical comedy for NBC…even though neither of them is a recently divorced father who falls in love with a cop who has little experience with kids. (Isn’t it fun watching TV destroy the value of language!?)
- Alex Gansa & Howard Gordon (HOMELAND)have a deal for ANATOMY OF VIOLENCE, an FBI series, at CBS. (Based on a neurological study by Adrian Raine which, according to Amazon.Com, has nothing in common with the series except for the title…and attitude. (Time now to ponder what purpose words can possibly have after they lose all meaning.)
- Hilary Winston (MY NAME IS EARL) is writing the pilot for BAD TEACHER, a sitcom adaptation of the not-so-successful feature that starred Cameron Diaz for CBS. (Figuring what? that without Cameron Diaz it might succeed?)
- Nancy Miller (SAVING GRACE) is adapting the hit Mexican telenovela TERESA for ABC. (Because we all know anything original might be risky. (EDITED TO ADD: …even though SAVING GRACE was one of the best risks any network ever took.)
(ALSO EDITED TO ADD: Um, no, we didn’t mean that the joke wouldn’t be unappreciated but that it should be about writers who are unappreciated. Sheesh!)
Today’s TV Writing Deals Dept: 10/7/12
Old TV writing joke: “Know why TV writers brag about their deals? Cuz that’s all they have.” Think about it:
- Tyler Perry (TYLER PERRY’s HOUSE OF PAYNE, MEET THE BROWNS) is writing and producing 2 new shows for OWN, in return for which he now has a very large ownership stake in the net. (Jeeze, nobody ever told us we had to buy our way into TV…and yet it definitely makes sense. Depressing sense, but sense.)
- Douglas Segal (THREE KINGS) is writing a supernatural drama about a devil trying to save “compromised souls” for the CW. (Let that be a lesson to us all: No compromise! No surrender! Oh, that isn’t what it means?)
- M. Night Shyamalan (THE SIXTH SENSE) & John Glenn (EAGLE EYE) are writing the pilot for LOST HORIZON for NBC. (Strangely, LOST HORIZON isn’t based on the book of the same name but on MOBY DICK. We figure somebody misread their high school reading list and still hasn’t been corrected.)
- Ryan Murphy (GLEE, AMERICAN HORROR STORY, THE NEW NORMAL) is writing the pilot for MONTAUK, a conspiracy thriller, for Fox and an unnamed sitcom for NBC. (Yes, it’s true. We don’t even know this guy and we hate him. We really do. And if that isn’t the essence of showbiz, what is?)
- Charley and Vlas Parlapanides (IMMORTALS) are writing THE CENTURIAN, about a Marine working with the angel of his best friend for CBS. (The way we hear it, the original pitch was about a Marine working with “the agent” of his best friend, but something got lost in the translation and who’s going to argue with a “Yes?”)
- GIRLS creator Lena Dunham will be getting over $3,500,000 for her book of essays, Not That Kind of Girl, (because she’s got herself a very hot, in, and trendy series and why should she settle for less?)
Today’s TV Writing Deals Dept: 10/6/12
The rich get richer. Ain’t life grand?
- Baz Luhrmann (MOULIN ROUGE, THE GREAT GATSBY) has signed a 2-year deal with Sony Pictures Television to develop TV projects. (This is a man who began his career as a playwright, then switched to directing Oscar-winning films. Will nothing stop his downward spiral?)
- Jay Baruchel & Jesse Chabot (GOON) will co-write GOON 2. (We know this is a feature film and not TV. Just trying to raise the TVWriter™ tone a bit.)
- Noah Haley (BONES, THE UNUSUALS) is writing the pilot for a TV series version of FARGO for the Coen Brothers (everything cool and funny that you’ve ever watched) and FX (which, evidently, wants to be cool and funny, which is, you know, cool in itself.)
- 30 ROCK will be history soon, but Tina Fey will be hard at work at Universal Television for the next 4 years creating new projects (because, evidently, she really is the greedy bitch Alec Baldwin has claimed…and what’s not to love about that?)
David Fincher! Kevin Spacey! Netflix! What Can Go Wrong?
Sorry, kids, but we aren’t being snarky. We actually mean that question. Yesterday, the Netflix blog announced that HOUSE OF CARDS, a new series made just for them, will debut February 1, 2013, with not just the first, nor the first and the second, but all 13 episode springing to life on the website at once.
Writers include Beau Willimon, who wrote the pilot based on a novel by Michael Dobbs, and, we’re guessing several others who Netflix hasn’t bothered to name, probably for the usual reasons. (“Writers? These shows are written? By humans?”)