Since Friends ended back in 2004, actress Jennifer Aniston has stuck more to developing her film career than anything television-related. But that's all changing with her new project, a scripted drama about morning TV shows, which is now moving forward in a big way after netting a two-season straight-to-series order from Apple. That show, which will see Aniston teamed up with Big Little Lies' Reese Witherspoon, is one of two major orders from Apple, with the other being the previously announced Amazing Stories reboot from Hannibal and American Gods mastermind Bryan Fuller.
Still without a functioning title, the morning TV project landed at Apple after a modest bidding war among networks occurred, with more than just a few studios interested in getting Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon as lead stars. The two-season order is set for ten episodes to be produced per season, according to Deadline, with Media Res as the studio putting it together. Media Res founder Michael Ellenberg came up with the story pitch, which was the expanded into a script by political strategist and House of Cards producer Jay Carson, who will take on showrunner duties for those first two seasons.
The series aims to offer an inside look into the lives of the personalities who make up the morning TV landscape, digging into what goes into this everyday lifestyle, and part of its story has been taken from the Brian Stelter book Top of the Morning. One has to assume that we'll see Jennifer Aniston drinking as least as much coffee as she drank in Central Perk on Friends. Speaking of that show, it's where Aniston and Reese Witherspoon got to share some screentime as sisters Rachel and Jill, though it's still not quite clear what their roles will be in the new show.
When it was first announced, the project was presumably going to end up at a premium cable network or streaming service, but it doesn't seem like sex and violence was the reason for that non-broadcast push, since Apple had previously announced that it won't be developing hard-R shows for its subscribers. So maybe we'll just get to see some well-written, by-the-book drama that doesn't need to go salacious to stay interesting.
On the flip side of all that, we also get to celebrate the straight-to-series order for Amazing Stories, which will be a reimagined version of the beloved anthology series from Steven Spielberg, who is also attached behind the scenes for the new project. Besides him, Bryan Fuller will be calling a lot of the shots, with Bones creator Hart Hanson also executive producing. The reboot concept has been in the works for the past couple of years, and it was just last month when Apple stepped it up to make itself the streaming home for the Amazing Stories update.
Understandably, neither project has a release date yet, which is good, since the first show doesn't even have a name yet. Stay tuned for more info about the both of them, though, and we'll have more to say about it in the near future. To see what shows will hit the small screen before the year's end, head to our fall TV schedule.
