Phil Lord and Chris Miller Turning Hugely Popular SERIAL Podcast Into a TV Show
Here's yet another idea that sounds absolutely terrible, but because creative geniuses Phil Lord and Chris Miller are behind it, will probably turn out to be great.
If you're a podcast listener — or even if you aren't, actually — you've likely heard of Serial, the This American Life podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig that quickly became a phenomenon when it debuted last year and won a Peabody Award. The show took a deep dive into the murder case of Adnan Syed, who allegedly killed his girlfriend Hae Min Lee when they were teenagers, and tried to see if Syed was actually guilty of the crime. It's riveting stuff, and I'd highly recommend checking it out if you haven't listened yet.
Anyway, when something catches fire, Hollywood typically looks for a way to latch on, so the rights to the show were being shopped around last year for a film or TV adaptation, and now THR reports that Lord and Miller — the dynamic duo behind the Jump Street films, The LEGO Movie, the new Han Solo Star Wars spinoff, and more — are going to produce a TV series based on the podcast. An important distinction: the show won't be based on Syed's case, but rather the creation and recording of the podcast itself. Sounds like a kind of terrible idea, right? A show about the making of a podcast? But I'm guessing Lord and Miller have something cool up their sleeves.
Koenig and her producing partners liked the duo's pitch and are on board with the idea, and the plan is to find a writer or writers quickly and start pitching to cable networks.
"From the very first week of Serial’s release last fall, everyone at Fox 21 TVS was obsessed with the podcast. One year later, thanks to the incredible passion of Chris and Phil, who flew to New York and shared their vision with Sarah, Julie [Snyder], Alissa [Shipp] and Ira [Glass] for what the series could be, we’re moving forward on this exciting project," said Fox 21 TV Studios president Bert Salke, who is already collaborating with the This American Life team on another project. "What you have here is a 'once every ten years creative storytelling phenom' with a 'once in ten years take' with a 'once in twenty-five years creative team.' We are confident we’ll attract a spectacular writer and look forward to pitching it to outlets very soon."
Added Serial’s Snyder, "Chris and Phil take an unexpected approach to telling stories and that is so appealing to us at Serial. They experiment. They don’t mimic formulas. Developing a show with them is exciting because we feel like we speak the same language, only they’re smarter than us."
The second season of Serial will reportedly focus on Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier who was held captive by the Taliban during his service in Afghanistan. There's no timetable yet on the release date of the show, but hopefully we'll see how this plays out soon. Lord and Miller haven't steered us wrong yet, so I have complete faith that they'll be able to pull this off without a hitch. Here's SNL's great Serial parody from last Christmas. Maybe they'll cast Cecily Strong as Koenig: