Category: TV Writing Deals

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…

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…)

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 10/16/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Jason Gunn (WILFRED) is adapting the Peruvian comedy MY PROBLEM WITH WOMEN for ABC…in English even! (Cuz it’s new! Different! Exciting! What? It isn’t? Then here’s an even better reason: It’s already a hit somewhere!)
  • Robin French & Kieron Quirke (CUCKOO) are adapting their UK comedy series (CUCKOO, yep) about a family’s reaction when their daughter returns from vacation married to a charming “hippie moron” for NBC. (Cuz the NBC suits couldn’t find anything not already written in English that was nearly so killer.)
  • Emily Kapnek (SUBPURGATORY) is writing the pilot for the ABC comedy SELFIE, rumored to be a variation of MY FAIR LADY about a young woman who makes it big on Facebook for all the wrong reasons. (If you’re familiar with MY FAIR LADY you’ll see the resemblance right away. What? You are and you don’t? Son of a bitch, would you believe those development fuckers are lying to us yet again?)
  • Joel Stein (we don’t know who he is, but he sounds like the kind of nice, Jewish boy our mom always wanted us to bring home) is writing MY EX LIFE, a comedy about a divorced dad who is totally jealous of his wife’s new boyfriend, for Fox. (Cuz we’re all jealous of our ex’s new mates and will identify all the way, right? Well maybe not all of us. We, for one, have absolutely nothing but pity for whomever is currently shacking up with our sonuvabitch cheating heart ex!)
  • Andrew Cosby (EUREKA) has sold his spec drama, STRANGE FICTION, to NBC. (And we’re hoping that, drama or not, it has the same wit and humor our dearly departed old Syfy fave brought to the screen for so many years.)
  • Sue Chung (Newbie! Yay!) has sold her spec pilot, ALLEGIANCE, about a young woman FBI agent chasing the deadliest domestic terrorist in history – her mother – to ABC. (Cuz it’s new! Different! Exciting! Yes, we know we’ve said that before, but this time it might actually be true!)