Pilots in September: It’s Like Christmas in July.
It being the development season, the fevered orgy of script buys and put pilot orders are making most of the news. But a few recently ordered pilots are already coming together for fall shoots.
Among them is “The Manzanis,” a project that’s been kicking around for the past few years that finally landed a pilot order from ABC, with Kirstie Alley attached to star. It’s being cast by Nikki Valko and Ken Miller ahead of a planned November shoot. The show is about a big Italian family that moves into a quiet suburban neighborhood and makes it…less quiet.
In other news, TBS is doubling down on the bro-coms, ordering a pilot from “Franklin & Bash” bro-star Breckin Meyer called “Men at Work,” about a bro who discovers that his ho is cheating on him and he’s all “Bro-mie don’t play dat” as his bros who work with him at a bro-centric men’s magazine rally around him, proving once and for all that it is truly bros before hos. (If you thought I was just trying to be funny in that last sentence, I wasn’t. That was basically pulled from the show bible verbatim.) It was ordered in the last week of August, but it’s already casting up for an October shoot. Hollywood’s choicest bros will be knocking down the doors at Zane/Pillsbury trying to get a piece of this action!
Finally, over at TBS sister network TNT, yet another Western-style period drama (see “Hell on Wheels,” “Hatfields & McCoys,” “Justified” kind of) has been ordered. This one is called “The Tin Star,” which some production exec with juice thought was better than the original title, “Gateway.” (Note: It is not better.) It’s about three brothers who band together to keep order after their sheriff father is gunned down in the street. It takes place in the period after the Civil War.
Title aside, this project sounds promising, just like the others, but don’t ask me. I think “Big Jake” is John Wayne’s best movie. Anyhow, “The Tin Star” is being cast by Veronica Collins Rooney, and shooting is set to get under way in New Mexico next month.
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