Amazon Orders ‘The Tick,’ ‘I Love Dick,’ Jean-Claude Van Damme Comedies to Full Series
Amazon Studios announced that it has greenlit three comedies — Jill Soloway’s “I Love Dick,” “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” and its reboot of “The Tick” — as original series set to debut in 2017.
The half-hour series are “I Love Dick,” adapted by “Transparent” creator Soloway based on the feminist novel about a couple’s marital struggles in the artistic and academic community of Marfa, Texas; “Jean-Claude Van Johnson,” featuring martial-arts actor Jean-Claude Van Damme operating under an alias as the most dangerous undercover private contractor in the world; and “The Tick,” a revival of the offbeat superhero story based on the popular comic.
The new series orders come after Amazon released pilots of each show on Aug. 19; Amazon says it incorporates viewer feedback and ratings in deciding which TV shows to order as full series. “I Love Dick,” “The Tick” and “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” are slated to premiere exclusively on Amazon Prime Video next year in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria and Japan.
“These pilots were vast in scope, disruptive in tone, challenging in story and sometimes even funny,” said Joe Lewis, head of half-Hour series for Amazon Studios. “It’s rewarding to see customers embrace them in such a huge way. We can’t wait to premiere these series next year on Prime Video.”
“I Love Dick” stars Kathryn Hahn (“Transparent”) and Griffin Dunne (“Dallas Buyers Club”) as a couple who move to a Texas college town, after Dunne’s character is offered a fellowship to finish a book on the Holocaust. When they meet Dick, played by Kevin Bacon (“The Following”), he upends their preconceptions about love and monogamy.
Based on Chris Kraus’ psycho-sexual novel of the same name, “I Love Dick” is executive produced by Soloway, Andrea Sperling (“Transparent”) and Sarah Gubbins (“Ten Aker Wood”). The pilot was directed by Soloway and written by Gubbins.
In “Jean-Claude Van Johnson,” the action-film star (playing himself) has been retired from battling bad guys for years when a chance encounter with a lost love brings him back into the game — and this time, he’ll be deadlier than ever. (Probably.) The pilot starred Van Damme along with Kat Foster (“Your Family or Mine”), Moises Arias (“The Middle”) and Phylicia Rashad (“Creed,” “The Cosby Show”).
“Jean-Claude Van Johnson” is executive produced by Peter Atencio (“Key and Peele”), Ridley Scott (“The Good Wife”), David W. Zucker (“The Man in the High Castle”) and Van Damme. The pilot for the show, from Scott Free Productions, was directed by Atencio, and written and created by Dave Callaham (“Mortal Kombat”).
“The Tick,” based on the comic by Ben Edlund, was previously adapted as a sitcom starring Patrick Warburton in the titular role that aired on Fox in 2001. The Amazon pilot starred Peter Serafinowicz (“Guardians of the Galaxy”), Griffin Newman (“Vinyl”), Jackie Earle Haley (“Watchmen”), Valorie Curry (“House of Lies”), Yara Martinez (“Jane the Virgin”) and Brendan Hines (“Scorpion”).
In the series, in a world where superheroes have been real for decades, an underdog accountant with no superpowers at all (Griffin) realizes his city is owned by a global supervillain long-thought dead. As he struggles to uncover the conspiracy, he falls in league with a strange blue superhero: the Tick (Serafinowicz).
“The Tick” is executive produced by Edlund (“Supernatural”), Barry Josephson (“Bones”) and Barry Sonnenfeld (Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events”), directed by Wally Pfister (The Dark Knight), and written by Edlund. The show is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television.
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