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Amazon Studios announced Tuesday it will unveil a new slate of pilots starring performers such as Brian Dennehy, Paget Brewster and Steve Zahn on January 15. The company has been aggressively shuffling its programming lineup early in the new year. The pilot announcement came only a day after the company revealed it kiboshed a series order for Chris Carter’s “The After.”
Despite getting strong viewer feedback and a series greenlight, only the pilot of “The After” was produced. Still, Amazon is keeping faith with its viewer feedback model. “We look forward to seeing our customers’ response to these new projects,” Roy Price, Amazon Studios vice president, told Variety. “We are working with great storytellers on some fascinating ideas for the year’s first pilot season.”
The seven new primetime pilots, which include a documentary series titled “The New Yorker Presents,” and six new kids pilots will debut on Amazon Instant Video, the company said.
The scripted primetime pilots include “Cocked,” a comedy about “a corporate lapdog is forced to return home to Virginia to save his family’s struggling gun business.” In addition to Dennehy it stars Sam Trammell and Jason Lee. “Down Dog” also joins Amazon’s L.A.-centered scripted lineup. The pilot stars Josh Casaubon as a “dashing, happy-go-lucky L.A. yoga instructor [who] has breezed through life, women and jobs, but when he breaks up with the woman who runs his yoga studio, he’s finally forced to face obstacles, and has to learn how to transcend himself,” according to Hollywonk, the Amazon Studios blog.
Meanwhile, “Salem Rogers,” a comedy about a former supermodel who tries to “recreate her success” that will star Leslie Bibb, was written by Lindsey Stoddart, who submitted the script to Amazon Studios as part the open screenplay process.
There are also some historical dramas on the new pilot slate. “The Man in the High Castle,” based on Philip K. Dick’s novel, portrays a world where the Allies lost World War Two, while “Point of Honor” is a family drama set amid the Civil War.
Also in the lineup is “Mad Dogs,” a comedy about a “group of underachieving forty-somethings reunite to celebrate the success of their buddy at his estate in Belize.”