ABC Orders Seven Comedy Pilots. Johnny Knoxville, Jermaine Fowler and more.
ABC has ordered 7 new comedy pilots looking to get back on top in the TV sitcom landscape. The network is thinking there’s strength in numbers by producing so many comedy pilots and hoping some if not all hit.
According to Variety, ABC is doing a pilot with Johnny Knoxville. The “Jackass” leader will produce and narrate this series about his own childhood experiences that led him to a career in hurting himself and others.
Jermaine Fowler has a comedy pilot in the works with ABV called “Delores & Jermaine”. Fowler plays a fictionalized version of himself who moves in with his grandmother. She’s a former cop with really strict ground rules.
Dan Fogelman who wrote the Disney animated comedy adventures, “Cars” and “Tangled” and wrote and produced ABC’s medieval comedy, “Galavant” has two pilots in the works at the network. One is an untitled basketball buddy sitcom featuring a non-English speaking player forced to work with an interpreter who knows nothing about basketball. His other ABC pilot project is “The King of 7-B” about an agoraphobic who thinks he’s met the love of his life after leaving his apartment for the first time in 20 years.
“The 46 Percenters” is being called an “anti-rom-com” and follows three couples that decide to stick out the marriages even though things aren’t working.
“American Dad” and “King of the Hill” writer and producer Jonah Miller has an untitled pilot about a couple who have no interest in sports and are forced into organized athletics with other parents they can’t stand because their kid turns out to be a natural.
On the other side of the sports prodigy, ABC also ordered a pilot for “The Brainy Bunch” about a couple who have produced extremely intelligent children through genetics and homeschooling and try to help them develop their social skills as well.
ABC’s new comedy fortunes have gone both ways. Their freshman comedies, “Selfie” and “Manhattan Love Story” were cancelled almost immediately while “Cristela” and “Black-ish” have helped with the network’s ratings.
