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.