Amazon Studios Greenlights ‘Betas’, Another Comedy Show About Silicon Valley
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Still feelin’ all ragey about the way Bravo portrayed the Valley in Start-Ups? Worried Mike Judge won’t do it right (wait, does Mike Judge ever do anything not-right?) with his upcoming Silicon Valley HBO comedy series?
A new challenger approaches! Amazon has just announced that they’ve greenlit a pilot of ‘Betas’, a show about “four computer geeks and their quest for nerd fame”. Please don’t suck. Please don’t suck. Please don’t suck.
Here’s who’s involved so far:
- Michael Lehmann will direct. Lehmann’s best known work is as the director of Heathers, but he also directed 40 Days and 40 Nights, The Truth About Cats And Dogs, and a whole bunch of episodes of American Horror Story, Dexter, True Blood, and Big Love.
- Also directing and producing are Alan Freedland (who most recently produced Guys With Kids and American Dad), Alan Cohen (also American Dad), and Michael London (Sideways)
- Jon Daly (Of UCB and the Mr. A$$ sketch group)
- Ed Begley Jr. (Of being Ed Friggin’ Begley Jr.)
- Joe Dinicol
- Margo Harshman (Big Bang Theory’s Alex)
- Charlie Saxton (Remember Jess’ kinda douchey new neighbor on New Girl? That guy.)
- Karan Soni (You’d probably remember him from Safety Not Guaranteed)
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This is the 8th comedy pilot that Amazon has greenlit so far, following Alpha House, Browsers, Dark Minions, Onion News Empire, Supanatural, Those Who Can’t, and, of course, the Zombieland series that was just announced earlier this week.
Amazon is planning on throwing all of these series into the ring and counting on user feedback to determine which ones carry on…. which, given that the show is about the Silicon Valley and we tend to be a pretty critical bunch, means they’ve got a bit of an uphill battle here. Unlike Zombieland, which pretty much just has to not be terrible.
(If all else fails, they can add one more T to the name and make it a show about fighting fish. I’d watch the hell out of that.)
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