Big Name Comedy Pilots To Battle To The Death On Amazon Studios

Last month, the fledgling Amazon Studios announced it had green lit Browsers, a workplace comedy penned by Daily Show writer David Javerbaum. As it turns out, Javerbaum will have to defeat some strong competition if he wants his show to come to fruition. A report in TechCrunch has revealed Amazon will distribute six separate comedy pilots, at which point audiences will decide which one becomes a full-length series. That’s right: it’s Last Comic Standing meets The Hunger Games.

The six pilots have already been chosen, and unlike the similarly-styled TV Reset Project, most of the creators are comedy notables:

• Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau will create a pilot called Alpha House, about four senators who live together.
• The aforementioned Browsers will be in the running.
• Kevin Sussman and John Ross Bowie, who play Stuart and Barry respectively onBig Bang Theory, will write Dark Minions, which will have a workplace tone similar to Browsers (except animated and set on an intergalactic warship.)
• The Onion will get their foot in yet another door
  , releasing a pilot about what goes on behind the scenes of the Onion News Network.
• Kristen Schaal (come on, you know who she is) will co-produce Supanatural, about a pair of divas who must save the world from the paranormal. Sounds like Ghost Ghirls to me.

Joining the five comedy heavyweights is a little known trio of indie creators, Andrew Orvedahl, Adam Cayton-Holland and Benjamin Roy, who will put together a comedy about teachers called Those Who Can’t. They were discovered through Amazon’s call for scripts and will play the underdog role. Still, their previous series, The Grawlix, wasn’t half bad. If they get support through the indie community, we could have an upset on our hands.

The release date for these pilots are not yet determined, but given the star power involved, I’ll be sure to keep everyone posted so we can have our say on which episodes are funny, and which ones will die.