Comedy Headlines for 10/11/12

What’s happening in the comedy world now…

  • Jeff Dunham’s new ventriloquism special, Minding The Monsters, played to 5.02 million viewers when it premiered Sunday night on Comedy Central.
  • Comedians Daniel Sloss and Sam Morril have signed with New Wave Entertainment’s Maureen Talan for management. They join Gary Gulman and Andrew Norelli in repping up with NWE recently.
  • Adult Swim has renewed Eagleheart for a third season, its star Chris Elliott announced on Late Show with David Letterman on Tuesday night. The late-night programming arm of Cartoon Network earlier had ordered up a fifth season of the Emmy-winning Childrens Hospital, as well as a third season for NTSF:SD:SUV. All three series are expected to return in 2013.
  • Tony Krantz has sold several projects to various TV networks through his Flame Ventures production company, Deadline reports. Among them, two comedies: Performance Anxiety (to FOX), with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Emily Ziff as executive producers, about a local comedy theater group in the heartland; and an untitled Sideline Reporter Project (to TBS) that revolves around a local cable sports network — its executive producers include writer/director Ron Shelton and sportscasters Rich Eisen and Suzy Shuster.
  • Ty Burell and his brother Duncan have sold ABC on a single-cam comedy they’ve written based on their own childhood, centered on two families that buy a store in rural Oregon. ABC gave the brothers a script commitment with penalty, Deadline reports.
  • Comedy Central has set air dates for multiple upcoming stand-up comedy specials….Chris Hardwick’s “Mandroid” will premiere at 11 p.m. Nov. 10; Kyle Kinane’s “Whiskey Icarus” will debut at 11 p.m. Nov. 24; and the network television premiere of “Russell Peters: The Green Card Tour,” happens at 1 a.m. Nov. 30.
  • In Tumblr-to-TV-deal news…the Hollywood Assistants Tumblr only needed five months to earn a development deal from CBS — its author, Lauren Bachelis, will write and produce the project, retitled 20-Nothings. Bachelis started the Tumblr as an assistant at CAA. Now she’s repped by CAA (as well as Mosaic).
  • The American adaptation of an Australian series, Strange Calls, has received a put pilot commitment from ABC. Writer Donick Cary will set the U.S. version on Nantucket island, where a cop on the graveyard shift takes a lot of, er, strange calls. Ruben Fleischer is on board to direct.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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