Previous reports had already indicated that comedy pilots Betas and Alpha House were going to series at Amazon Prime. Today, Amazon Studios has officially announced the series orders for both comedies, as well as three of the six children's pilots in contention at the streaming video service. Annebots, Creative Galaxy and Tumbleleaf have all made the cut. These five series will go on to be Amazon's first-ever original series, and will eventually be made available exclusively through Prime Instant Video, which requires an Amazon Prime membership.
Amazon made their pilots available to view on their site back in April and encouraged people to watch and review them as they would submit a product review for anything else they sell on their site. Those reviews were said to play a part in the studio's final decision on which to send to series.
“We are thrilled at the enthusiastic customer response to our first original pilots,” said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “We built Amazon Studios so that customers could help decide which stories would make the very best movies and TV shows. It’s exciting to see the process in motion, doing exactly what we set out to do. The success of this first set of pilots has given us the push to try this approach with even more shows—this is just the beginning.”
Alpha House stars John Goodman and Mark Consuelos and centers on four senators living together in a house. Betas, meanwhile, stars Ed Begley Jr., Joe Dinicol and Karan Soni and centers on a group of guys who are developing the next great social networking ep. It's worth noting that both shows are about a group of guys, and both have greek letters in their names. While I doubt Amazon intentionally set out to push forward with two shows that are noticeably guy-focused/bro-centric, that's pretty much what's happened here.
When we heard that Alpha House and Betas were going to series, we also heard that the Zombieland pilot was not, as confirmed via Tweet from writer/executive-producer Rhett Reese. Browsers was also reportedly not going forward. For the time being, it looks like the other comedy pilots aren't either, which is disappointing, as I was hoping Dark Minions, the stop-motion animated comedy about funny villains, would make the cut.
Meanwhile, when Leslie reviewed the children's pilots, she said Sara Solves It was "the best of Amazon's efforts" among the kids selection. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that one made it onto the line-up. But Annebots, Creative Galaxy and Tumbleleaf did go to series. And, like the comedies, Amazon aims to get these new series up on their Prime Instant Video menu early next year (2014).
