Amazon’s latest pilot season, where viewers watch and rate potential new series, will include comedies from Sacha Baron Cohen, Tig Notaro and Louis CK, the studio has announced.
Six pilots will be made free to air on Amazon’s Instant Video platform this autumn. The company will then consult user feedback as well as its own internal data and turn the most popular into full series.
Baron Cohen is listed as an exective producer on Highston, a half-hour comedy about a teenager who has a number of famous imaginary friends. Its pilot will feature guest appearances from former basketball player Shaquille O’Neal and the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist, Flea.
CK, meanwhile, will executive-produce One Mississippi, a dark comedy based on the life of standup comic Notaro. Notaro will star as herself, while the pilot will be written by Diablo Cody, best known for the coming-of-age comedy Juno.
Four drama pilots will also debut: Z, a biopic series based on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, the 1920s socialite and wife of author F Scott Fitzgerald, which will star Christina Ricci; Edge, a violent western based on the books of George G Gillman and written by Shane Black, screenwriter for Iron Man 3 and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; Good Girls Revolt, a newsroom drama set during the cultural revolution of the late 1960s; and Patriot, a political thriller about an intelligence officer with post traumatic stress disorder featuring Lost’s Terry O’Quinn.
Since its inaugural pilot season in April 2013, Amazon has greenlit a number of series based on positive user reviews. The most successful of these has been Jill Solloway’s comedy drama Transparent, whose star, Jeffrey Tambor, this week received an Emmy Award for his portrayal of a transgender woman coming out to her family.
Not all of Amazon’s original series have met with such acclaim. Hand of God, a crime drama starring Ron Perlman, received widespread negative reviews when it debuted last month, with Vox describing it as “excruciatingly terrible television”.
