In the great migration of film stars to television, Amazon has lured a trophy talent. Woody Allen has signed a deal with Amazon Studios to create his first TV series. The influential and Oscar-winning filmmaker will write and direct a half-hour comedy. The show is expected to debut next year, but details about the premise and cast of the untitled series are still unknown—even to Allen, apparently.
“I don’t know how I got into this. I have no ideas and I’m not sure where to begin. My guess is that Roy Price will regret this,” Allen said in a statement, referring to the vice president of Amazon Studios.
The announcement comes two days after Amazon snagged the first major award for its original programming. At the Golden Globes, “Transparent” and star Jeffery Tambor won best television series and best actor in the comedy category.
The studio ordered a full season of Allen’s series, which means that the 79-year-old director doesn’t have to go through Amazon’s typical pilot process for original programs. Usually Amazon users vote on one trial episode of a new show, a factor that studio executives weigh when deciding whether to pick up a full season.
The influence of auteur writers and producers plays a major part in the effort by new TV distributors to draw viewers and (in the case Amazon and Netflix) paid subscribers. For instance, the imprimatur of respected director David Fincher helped draw attention to “House of Cards,” the first Netflix original series to receive critical acclaim and awards. Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh is among the creators of “Red Oaks,” one of five original series that Amazon plans to launch this year.
Allen has written for television before—he worked on the ground floor of network comedy as a writer for “The Sid Caesar Show”—but the Amazon project will be his first series created for TV.
Cilogy wrote:as long as they continue churning out high quality shit like HoC, OITNB, and all these specials and documentaries they do, I'm behind them 100%
Oh there will be some trashy shows from them too. Reaching wide range of audiences and all that.
Cilogy wrote:as long as they continue churning out high quality shit like HoC, OITNB, and all these specials and documentaries they do, I'm behind them 100%
Oh there will be some trashy shows from them too. Reaching wide range of audiences and all that.
Well, critically. It got enough attention to get renewed at least.
Which reminds me, have they said anything about whether Arrested Development season 5 is happening? I know there are problems clearing the schedules of the cast to do it since everyone's doing separate projects now, but it'd be really strange to go to all the effort for season 4 to just leave it there.
