Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 10/26/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Spike Feresten (SEINFELD) has sold MASSHOLES, an animated comedy pilot, to Fox. The series takes us through the adventures of a nerdy tweenager living in a town “full of tough guys and half-wits.” (“Jokers to the left of me, fools to the right…!” We love this idea. Hell, we love the damn title. This baby’s got W-I-N-N-E-R written all over it.)
  • Lauren Blum & Rebecca Dana (newbies) are adapting Rebecca’s memoir Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde into a half hour comedy at Fox. (So there ya go, kids. All you gots to do is write the story of you Millennial or younger life and the TV world will be your oyster. Yeppers, you heard it here!)
  • Larry Trilling (PARENTHOOD) is writing  EMPOWERED, an NBC drama pilot about badass events taking place in the pharmaceutical industry. (Cuz the evils of Big Pharma are hot now, regardless of how absolutely dull that particular biz really is. Well, except for the short-skirted sales reps who’re always hanging around doctors’ offices and…you know. They’re kinda exciting, yeah.)
  • A.M. Homes (THE L WORD) is adapting Koethi Zan’s best-seller, The Never List, in a pilot for CBS. (The book is about what happens to 4 young women who’ve been kidnapped after their rescue. Just what CBS’s audience of old codgers will love, right?)
  • Chris Downey (LEVERAGE) is writing an untitled ABC pilot about an FBI forensic psychiatrist who teams up with a brilliant pickpocket-turned-Vegas magician to work cool stings and catch baddies living it up in Vegas. (Well, at least there’s nothing generic about it. This baby’s definitely got everything pinpointed, for better or for worse.)
  • Jonathan Shapiro (THE PRACTICE) & Betsy Borns (ALL OF US) are collaborating on an ABC pilot called THE LAW OF ATTRACTION, about a beautiful and classy woman “who is forced to practice law with a charismatic, lower class tough guy.” (“Forced!” Did you hear that? Fucking “Forced!” Cuz everybody knows somebody who’s been forced to go into business with somebody who’s their direct opposite, don’tcha know? Why, we must know at least a dozen folks in that same situation in real life ourselves. What? You don’t believe us? Funny…neither do we.)

The One Film Every New TV Writer Must See

…And it wouldn’t hurt the film types either.

Some showrunner type you may have heard of – Damon Lindelof of LOST

If you want to know what it’s really like to toil in the diamond mines of episodic television, run, do not walk, to SHOWRUNNERS, a documentary that tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Directed by Des Doyle, the full-length film features the most powerful cast of superstar TV showrunners this side of, oh, Venus, including: read article