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Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are
- Michael Diliberti (30 MINUTES OR LESS) has sold a comedy series, SKIN DEEP, about an idealistic young beauty salon owner to ABC. (And all we can say is, boy, is that particular idealist ever in the wrong business! Being an idealistic beauty salon owner is like being an idealistic TV network executive. AKA…impossible, don’t you think?)
- Diliberti has also sold a drama series, VICE, to CBS. This one’s about some young cops who have to deal with their own vices while they’re undercover. (Notice that everybody in Michael’s series is “young.” So we know both shows are going to be way more than skin deep. Oh, wait….)
- Chris Keyser & Sydney Sidner (PARTY OF FIVE) are writing the pilot for a reboot of – wait for it – CHARMED for CBS. (Another new take on a show that worked just fine? We can’t help but wonder if Aaron Spelling, whose company produced the original, is rolling over in his grave. What’s that? He’s also the responsible party for the original CHARLIE’S ANGEL? Got it. Nevermind.)
- Mark Gibson & Philip Halprin (FUN CITY) are adapting Shon Hopwood’s memoir, LAW MAN, into a series for NBC. (Wow. The true story of a bank robber turned attorney. We can hardly wait for the episode about how he got a license to practice. If nothing else, it’ll be a good lesson in salesmanship cuz it’s almost as hard for a convicted felon to be admitted to the bar as hard as it is for a newbie writer to sell a series. Hmm…)
- Liz Feldman (2 BROKE GIRLS) is writing the pilot for an untitled NBC comedy series about a lesbian who gets pregnant and has no man to turn to cuz her male buddy just married the love of his life. (A series about a lesbian whose big problem is that she’s lost the man in her life? What century does this take place in? Oy!)
Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are
- Chris Collins (SONS OF ANARCHY) has sold ANONYMOUS, a drama about “an ex-special ops soldier who discovers a global coverup that forces him to go off the grid to help those who cannot help themselves,” to TNT. (Yeppers, we’ve heard this all before, but still…remember when PERSON OF INTEREST was just two guys doing good, before they expanded it to the 8,051 person team it now is? Wouldn’t it be cool if that’s what ANONYMOUS turned out to be?)
- Nina Fiore & John Herrera (ALPHAS) are writing the pilot for PLAYERS, a drama about Bad Hollywood back in the 1930s, for The CW. (Nothing really wrong about any of this except…The CW? This mean we’ll be seeing beautiful teenage Hollywood back in the days when everyone running a studio was a middle-aged white man who looked even older than that?)
- Chris Collins is back, this time with MOST WANTED, a Starz series tracing the rise and fall of a ’70s bank robber. (Cuz BONNIE AND CLYDE are already taken, we guess, and setting a show only 30 years ago instead of 80 should be cheaper to shoot. Less time travel involved, after all.)
- Ian Goldberg (ONCE UPON A TIME) & Jessica Borsiczky have sold GRAND AVENUE, a sort of UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS drama set in 1910 L.A. to Amazon Studios. (We admit to being just a tad dubious about anything Amazon is doing cuz…production values? But we’d love to see something set in this particular way-back work, if for no other reason than we’ve never seen that time period on TV before that we can remember.)
- John Ridley (12 YEARS A SLAVE) is writing the pilot for AMERICAN CRIME, an ABC drama that examines race relations as they pertain to a sensational murder. (If it’s presented with even one-eighth the sincerity and style of 12 YEARS A SLAVE we’re in. Assuming, that is, that Oprah isn’t involved. Cuz…Oprah?)
- Kelly Oxford (rejoice, newbies, becuz Kelly’s background is nothing more nor less than a popular Twitter feed) is writing a Fox comedy pilot set in a senior center. (We’re intrigued by this one simply cuz it breaks the most basic TV development rule: “Thou shalt never create a TV series about old people lest ye turn off the young audience that buys our sacred sponsors’ products.” And if conventional wisdom is correct, that seems like a really risky rule to break.)
Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are
- Michaela Watkins, Damon Jones & Teddy Riley (SNL, GROUNDLINGS, PARTY DOWN respectively) are creating the USA comedy BENCHED about a female corporate attorney who has a public nervous breakdown that -duh – changes her life. (We dunno what aspect of this is funnier. The attorney having a public nervous breakdown part, the female woman-type person having a public nervous breakdown part, or the life-changing part. But our sides are aching from all the laughter we’re holding in.)
- Kevin Falls (THE WEST WING) has teamed up with actor Rob Lowe to bring ABC a new drama series called THE POINT, about a single mother and her teenagers who move from Indiana to Malibu in 1976. (Yeppers, it’s supposedly based on Rob’s years growing up in Malibu. But if this baby gets on the air and we decide to watch, it’ll be for one reason only – a certain magical 6-letter word starting with “b” and ending with “i.” And only when our Significant Other isn’t, um, home. You didn’t know we were such a class act, didja?)
- Stacy Taub (GLEE) is writing what’s described as a “dental comedy” pilot for ABC. (Cuz everybody knows how funny dentists are, especially when they have you in the chair.)
- Sam Sklaver (BORED TO DEATH) has a deal to write another ABC comedy pilot, this one with a name: THE ALZHEIMER’S PROJECT. (Cuz everybody also knows that people with dementia are even funnier than dentists. Just ask our poor Uncle Jerome. And don’t worry about hurting his feelings cuz he won’t remember the question anyway.)
- Alexandra Cunningham (DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES) is writing the pilot for a rebooted version of MURDER, SHE WROTE, for NBC, about a hospital administrator who self-publishes a mystery novel and, you know, gets hooked on solving crime. (Cuz why concentrate on what made the original show work when you can screw it up a whole new way?)
- Bill Chais (FRANKLIN & BASH) is adapting Thomas Sniegoski’s series of fantasy novels about an angel who embraces earthly life into a police procedural series for NBC. (Let us all read responsively: “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” And don’t be embarrassed if you want to add on the “Why hast thou forsaken me?” bit.)
Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are
- Aaron Buchsbaum & Teddy Riley (newbs!) are developing a CBS comedy called ON THE FENCE about “the shifting dynamic of friends as they navigate their late twenties.” (At last, our life brought to the wee screen Oh, wait, although we definitely are part of a shifting dynamic and are in our late twenties, we don’t – sob – have any friends. Why does this series have to mock us? Why?)
- Ryan Shiraki (AWKWARD) is writing a Fox comedy about a working class family in Bakersfield. (This show is billed as “based on Shiraki’s real-life upbringing in Hawaii….” Of course. Bakersfield-Hawaii. Everybody knows they’re practically the same.)
- Greg Malins (HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER) has sold ODD COUPLE FAMILIES, a comedy about people who have to spend way too much time with their kids’ friends, to Fox. (Where, evidently, none of the D-Peeps has kids cuz let’s get real here. How much time does any parent ever spend with the parents of their kids’ pals? Nada, right? Unless – oh God – my parents weren’t like everybody else?)
- Chris Fedak (CHUCK) is writing an untitled NBC drama pilot about people who get a new chance at normal lives because of an anonymous organ donor. (This better be a horror project about the donor being a strangler/mass murderer cuz otherwise we’re heading to Netflix whenever this show is on.)
- Keenan Ivory Wayans (if you don’t know who he is, fuhgeddaboudit) is writing the pilot for a comedy series about “what happens when the whitest guy in America marries into a…close-knit African-American family.” (What happens? What happens? Why, hilarity happens, of course. Cruel, mocking derisive Wayans humor…which we just happen to luv.)
- Rebecca Sinclair (90210) is developing a surfer drama set in 1961 for The CW. (Cuz all us kids born after 1985 have a great big bone on for Malibu life back when our mommies and daddies were toddlers. Wow, talk about can’t miss!)
Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are
- Nick Zano (some actor type) is co-writing the comedy pilot, NICKY, with Andrew Reich & Ted Cohen (FRIENDS) for CBS. (It’s another supposedly autobiographical series, this time about Zano’s life being “raised in a multigeneration house of seven women in New Jersey. So we know that the character will either be a lover or hater of, well, women…and New Jersey. At least it’s a start.)
- David Caspe (HAPPY ENDINGS) & Erik Sommers (COMMUNITY) are writing the pilot for CBS’s ROOMMATES, a comedy about an ultra cool ladies man who ends up having to room with a slob. (Does Neil Simon know about this? In TV it sometimes seems like the details change but the song always remains the same.)
- Erik Sommers (yeppers, the very same) is also writing an ABC pilot about a young woman doctor in a chaotic inner city ER. (Actually, the press release describes her as a “plucky young doctor,” but we just couldn’t bring ourselves to write that. Probably not a good sign.)
- Dan St. Germain (web series KICKING DAN OUT) is writing an untitled Fox comedy about a guy who moves in with his ex and her new boyfriend so he can learn what went wrong with the relationship. (No word on why the ex is letting him do this. Maybe cuz he’s, like, the star?)
- Phil Rosenthal (EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND) is co-writing an unnamed ABC pilot that will feature none other than class act – we mean this – Henry Winkler with Max Winkler (NEW GIRL) & Bob Reinis (another actor type). (This series is going to be gold, you’ll see – but it’ll still be cancelled after 13 episodes. You’ll see that too.)