Amazon’s fifth round of competing pilots included seven offerings, making it the site’s most expansive pilot season yet. Out of those seven choices, three new series have emerged. Amazon Studios has green-lit full seasons of The Man in the High Castle, The New Yorker Presents, and Mad Dogs, while also renewing Mozart in the Jungle for a second season.
Out of all the pilots in Amazon’s new season, The Man in the High Castle is easily the most ambitious. Based off a novel by Philip K. Dick, it presents an alternate history in which the Axis Powers won World War II. One of the series’ executive producers will be Ridley Scott, who knows a thing or two about Philip K. Dick screen adaptations. In a press release, Amazon Studios VP Roy Price noted that The Man in the High Castle ended up as “our most watched pilot ever.”
While The Man in the High Castle is Amazon’s most ambitious pilot, The New Yorker Presents is its most experimental choice. The docu-series will adapt long-form stories from the titular magazine into documentary pieces on the Amazon website. This series will build on The New Yorker’s existing web video presence, which already includes a channel run by parent company Conde Nast.
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The third new series from Amazon’s fifth pilot season is Mad Dogs, a dramedy that sports an intriguing cast. A group of forty-something underachievers will be portrayed by Ben Chaplin, Michael Imperioli, Billy Zane, Steve Zahn, and Romany Malco.
In addition to its three new series, Amazon also renewed Mozart in the Jungle, a witty series about sex, drugs, and classical music. Mozart debuted in December to strong reviews, and it is now the third Amazon series to survive for at least two seasons, joining Transparent and Alpha House.
Notably absent from Amazon’s new slate are sitcoms. The two sitcoms in the fifth pilot season, Down Dog and Salem Rogers, both failed to make the cut. Meanwhile, the company has yet to decide the fate of Alpha House, which is looking for a third season after launching its second last October.
Even with the lack of sitcoms, Amazon’s latest crop is a strong out that ventures out into unexplored territory. No release dates for the new series have yet been announced.
