Fox and Desperate Housewives and Why Women Kill Creator Mark Cherry . The network also brings the Farmer Wants a Wife reality format back to America.
Two announcements ended the day on Fox Wednesday at the Television Critics Association. The Cherry project titled Jenny Is a Weapon has a scripted promise with an eye toward going straight into the series. Farmer Wants A Wife Meanwhile, has secured a flurry of orders and will start production in the fall and will follow several “hundreds of miles from the nearest Tinder date” farmer,” as Rob Wade, president of alternative entertainment and specials at Fox Entertainment, said.
“I was very excited about that show,” Wade told The Hollywood Reporter . “I think it’s going to talk to a lot of people. I think it touches on nostalgia for the past, and I think that in a weird way makes it very relevant in the present. “
Eureka Productions, in Australia The Farmer Wants His Wife edition, will produce the fox series. Paul Franklin, Chris Culvenor , Eden Gaha, David Tibballs executive producers.
Jenny Is a Weapon will be written by Cherry and Why Women Kill co-executive producer and director Joshua Michael Stern; they are with Ryan McPartlin (Devious Maids) and Travis Lively for sharing story credit. The four will executive produce with Mindy Schultes and Michael Harnell.
To be owned by Fox Entertainment The potential episode centers on “a sheltered Maryland housewife who, at the moment her marriage falls apart, discovers she possesses special psychic powers and is recruited by a secretive government agency, who will have to fight her broken heart. A trade-off between family and saving the world.
“We kind of wanted why women kill , but it’s already in the CBS system,” Fox Entertainment President Michael Thorne told THR. “But we have been eager to do business with Marc for many years. I think [Jenny is a weapon] will be another iconic female character with the humor, surprise, drama and incredible storytelling he is known for. “
Cherry is represented by A3 Artists Agency, Debbee Klein Management and Del Shaw. Stern is with A3, manager Ken Stovitz and Sloane Offer.
In a separate interview, Thorn and Wade discuss Fox’s scripted and unscripted roster, and their push to have more network programming.
In terms of your show ownership, do you feel like you’re getting where you want to be?
THORN This season reflects a new chapter in our growth strategy as we add to our new and returning series and build on those capabilities. Monarch is our first 20 percent owned Fox Entertainment show, premiering [September 10]. We are very excited about this. We are previewing the early days of Krapopolis episodes, this is our first 100 owned percent animated series Thanksgiving weekend, and then premieres at the end of the season in May. We just greenlit Bob Fisher, Rob Greenberg and Dan Sterling’s Animal Control, a very irreverent workplace comedy. This is our first percent owned live-action comedies, [we also have] co-productions of series like Clean Female Workers, Great Northern and some of our upcoming dramas, Defendants and Alert . So that’s a big priority for us. We’re approaching it like we’re programming choices in a very curated way, we’re not a high-volume company.
What does owning these shows mean for downstream revenue streams? Do you want to license them to Netflixes and Hulus all over the world?
THORN We have at Hulu our initial partners, Then we’ll be looking to do deals with other second window partners, which include [Fox’s AVOD streaming service] Tubi, among other platforms. This is something we’re only starting to explore now – in the case of Monarch we’ve partnered with Sony, where we have a lot of good business, distributing our international on the performance. This second window and downstream partnerships are what we’re talking about right now. We see a lot of opportunity there, especially as an independent company, you know, several of our competitors are more like closed systems. But there are still other companies that need independent suppliers to work with, so we see a lot of opportunity.
Special Forces show What you announced is new to Fox. Are there other subtypes of non-scripting programming that you consider untapped or underserved?
WADE I think it really needs to be reinvented without a script. This is reflected in how much older shows now dominate the schedule. The most successful unscripted show right now—every TV show, actually—is 20 years old. I think all of these areas need to be reinvented, whether it’s dating, social experimentation or musical diversity. I think now we have the technology and the ability to do things that were not possible before, certainly not 20 years ago. However, there is a real need to push the boundaries even further when it comes to finding truly original content.
Will The Farmer Wants Wife was the latest on The CW Reboot of version20s?
Wade
This is a different format. [The CW show] was more based on The Bachelor , with a farmer and multiple women, and they cut it out. This is actually four different farmers. This is basically a format that has been successful in places like Australia and France over the past years, many times over. Same title but different format.
Fox only has one new show coming out in the fall, but has a sizable deck of scripted and non-scripted shows . Do you see room for everything this season, or maybe something could be pushed down 2023?
THORN Historically, we’ve done a great job with midseason releases, and we’ve had a lot of traffic on our network as the NFL season and playoff football wrap up. HUT level is highest. And we have a tradition of really putting out groundbreaking new shows at that time of year. And, you know, last year it was cleaning lady and next level cook , and this year, obviously, we Hopefully it will Alert and Accused on the script side.
WADE We had a lot of conversations [about the schedule]. It’s been a very unusual few years. We had to completely change the schedule – we had to push new stuff to the back, which had a big impact on our production and our release model. We talked a lot about what you know, how and where to start a show, how much you can start, and what viewers can deal with. The idea of launching the show in a week is clearly not a viable option. So you have to really think about how to spread that out throughout the season. We’ve been thinking about how to parse it. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions. You may have a show you love and you want to start it, but there’s so much going on that you have to stick with it and start it when there’s a little gap on the schedule.
I was curious if you paid attention to the chatter that Tom Brady missed part of training camp because of the recording The Masked Singer.
WADE Yes, I’ve seen it I’ve seen the news. I mean, we never comment on casting. But we’ve obviously paid attention to it, and we’ve seen a lot of chatter about who might be attending. The thing about The Masked Singer is that over the past eight seasons, we’ve proven we’re capable of always surprising us with some of our pre-orders.
OK. I know you’re not going to tell me “oh yes he is” but when you see something like this I’m curious if you like the guesswork around.
Wade I enjoy the show whenever you guys talk. In this day and age, with so much content and so little audience anywhere, word of mouth and discussion are so valuable. Based on what you currently know about Monarch, do you think moving it is the right choice From January to Autumn?
THORN Creatively, yes. When there was a spike in COVID [last winter], we just knew we couldn’t [take the risk]. We are passionate about this show. We can’t risk being in a few episodes and having COVID shut us down, especially in a serialized character show. We were able to finish the production of the season and give the creators room to get it right. We’ve also been at different events related to country music and we can start introducing this really unique family drama, the music around it, and use the lead time and still pull the levers around some of our broadcast strengths, which means using football to help Roll out the series, we’re going to do it. Are we using our time? Yes, we did.
Interview edited and condensed.
2023
