CliffsNotes Web Series with Shakespeare, Twain Headed to AOL

The internet’s catalog of comedy programming relating stories of historical significance is more focused towards the absurd than the accurate. Brad Neely’s George Washington and Funny or Die’s Drunk History are condensed lessons made to make you laugh, not to make you educated. AOL, Mark Burnett, John Wiley & Sons, and Coalition Films think they can do both.

Today, Burnett’s One Three, Inc. announced a partnership with Coalition Films. Together they’ve acquired the rights from Wiley to develop a digital series of comedy shorts based on everyone’s favorite high school study buddy, CliffsNotes

. The plan is to release “high quality videos that provide analysis, interpretation, and criticism of the great works of literature in a fun and highly memorable way,” and to distribute those videos on AOL.

Works by Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens are the first slated to go into production, with the promise of many more to follow. Procrastinating teenagers with a distaste for the written word and term papers due are anxiously anticipating the release.

You can now add Burnett, Wiley, and Coalition to the laundry list of production partners AOL has signed in the past six months, including, but not limited to Vuguru, Next New Networks, Electus, and Endemol.