Australian TV’s most dysfunctional family, the Moodys, are to get a US remake.
Trent O’Donnell and Phil Lloyd, who created the ABC comedy A Moody Christmas, have been commissioned to write a pilot for the Fox network, which O’Donnell will direct.
The Australian production company Jungleboys will produce the pilot in collaboration with Doug Ellin, creator of Entourage, and the Tannenbaum Co’s Eric and Kim Tannenbaum for CBS TV Studios.
All four major US broadcast networks and US studios bid for the project. Fox, which is home to the US remake of Rake, was deemed the best creative fit for the quirky family comedy which bears similarities to the network’s Raising Hope, according to Deadline.com.
A Moody Christmas, which aired on the ABC last year, followed an Australian family’s misadventures on Christmas Day over six years.
Shooting of the sequel, The Moodys, starts next week in Sydney. The eight episodes will be based around events that bring the family together, unlike the first which followed prodigal son Sean (Patrick Brammall) as he returned home from England.
The US version will feature many of the same characters as it chronicles a dysfunctional family through the eyes of the youngest son who thought he'd escaped them, only to find himself trapped there once more.
Jungleboys’ MD Jason Burrows is an executive producer. The pilot is due to shoot next March. "Because US series are so many eps (22 or 24) it won't use the same Christmas device and not (follow Sean) to and from England each time but will be based on the same characters," Burrows told IF.
O’Donnell and Lloyd also created Review with Myles Barlow, which is being retooled in the US as Review with Forrest MacNeil for Comedy Central, starring Andrew Daly as a critic who investigates divorce, anonymous sex and all manner of criminal activity.
Next month O’Donnell will make his US directing debut on an episode of New Girl, a sitcom starring Zooey Deschanel that airs on Fox.