It snuck up on us, didn't it? The end of SNL Season 38 brought along with it key staff changes, among them the upcoming departure of head writer Seth Meyers and the immediate departures of cast members Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, and (unofficially) Jason Sudeikis. Few people have shaped SNL over the past 8 years more than these men — Meyers with his leadership in the writers room and charm as Weekend Update host, and Hader, Armisen and Sudeikis as the cast's workhorses and loadbearing performers. Indeed, many pegged Season 38 as a "transitional year" in the wake of Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg leaving the show a year ago, [...]
Fox became the first of the big four networks to announce its fall lineup last night, and they picked up five new comedies, including Brooklyn Nine-Nine from Parks and Recreation co-creator Mike Schur and Andy Samberg. Other comedies ordered by the network are Seth MacFarlane's live-action series Dads (which was given an early six-episode pickup in January), military sitcom Enlisted, Chris Meloni's Surviving Jack, and Us & Them, a US adaptation of the popular UK series Gavin & Stacey. All shows have received orders for 13 episodes, with Dads' six episodes also upped to 13.
Notable pilots that weren't picked up include law firm sitcom To My Assistant, which featured Catherine [...]
Seth Green and Seth MacFarlane are making a live action show together. Green has been cast in the lead role in Dads, a Fox sitcom from MacFarlane that has been given an early six-episode order for the fall. The multi-camera comedy follows two successful guys in their 30s (Green and Mindy Project's Tommy Dewey) whose dads (Martin Mull and Animal House's Peter Riegert) show up uninvited and move in with them. MacFarlane is serving as executive producer, and his Ted co-writers Wellesley Wild and Alec Sulkin wrote the script. This will be Seth Green's first regular role in a live action TV show since the short-lived NBC sitcom Four [...]
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Yesterday, we ran a piece on the history of animated TV comedy in the wake of The Simpsons, leaving off in 1999 with several new (and newish) shows finding success. The big networks spent most of the '90s trying to replicate the popularity of The Simpsons, with ABC, CBS, and NBC's attempts falling short and Fox finding hits at the end of the decade with a trio of new shows – King of the Hill, Futurama, and Family Guy. All of these shows echoed The Simpsons in some way. King of the Hill and [...]
Oscar winner Charlize Theron is in "final negotiations" to star opposite Seth MacFarlane in his new western comedy, A Million Ways to Die in the West, according to The Hollywood Reporter. MacFarlane will direct, co-write, and star in the live-action film, his second movie as a writer/director (after Ted) and first as a (non-voice) actor. He wrote the script with Ted collaborators Alec Sulkin and Wellesly Wild, and the movie has been likened to Blazing Saddles in all the news stories about it so far. and the story follows a wimpy farmer (MacFarlane) whose girlfriend leaves him after he backs out of a gunfight. Theron's character will be [...]
