This year’s Golden Globes were a huge win for the flourishing Amazon Studios, as its critical darling Transparent deservingly took home the prize for Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy, along with a Best Actor win for Jeffrey Tambor. How is the company celebrating? By upping its prestige factor and snagging filmmaking legend Woody Allen for their next original series.
And don’t worry, this isn’t indicative of the recent onslaught of 1980s movies getting turned into series; we’re not getting Hannah and Her Sisters II here. The show is simply called Untitled Woody Allen Project at the moment, and Amazon confirms they’ve ordered a full season of half-hour episodes from the nebbish director, making it the first time he’s gotten involved with creating a TV show. How was Scoop not a Bryan Fuller co-creation?
Woody Allen will be doing both the writing and the directing on the series, according to the press release, lest anyone thinks his name was arbitrarily added on. Here’s how he put it in the release.
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 [Amazon Studios Vice President] Roy Price will regret this.”
Always with a sense of humor, that guy. If we can do a little predicting here, Allen’s initial stint in TV will probably have something to do with “conversations between people who have forced sexual chemistry despite the male being 700 years older than the female, possibly with a murder or other major event tying it all together.” Perhaps that’s cheapening his brand, especially since 2013’s Blue Jasmine was such a championable flick. But then there was Magic in the Moonlight last year…
Allen’s only TV experience, outside of a couple of TV movies, was hosting the Saturday morning children’s documentary series Hot Dog, where he appeared alongside Jonathan Winters, Jo Anne Worley and, later, Tom Smothers. Considering how solid Amazon Instant has been at crafting shows geared towards younger viewers, I’d be perfectly happy to see a new rendition of Hot Dog come to audiences.
This untitled comedy is yet another major potential success for Amazon, which recently released the critical hit Mozart in the Jungle. The company should have a huge 2015, with upcoming releases such as the murder mystery Bosch, the excellent Steven Soderbergh-produced dramedy Red Oaks and the Ron Perlman-led drama Hand of God. Not to mention another season of Transparent, which will certainly be right back in the awards spotlight by this time next year.
With no real timeline for Allen’s series, we probably won’t be getting our bespectacled eyes on it until later this year, if not the beginning of 2016. My interest is certainly piqued.
