Kevin Reilly Will Go To The Ends Of The Westside To Take Your Sitcom Pitch
As we well know, former NBC president Kevin Reilly was thrust aside in a bloody coup in May of 2007, with original programming gangsta Ben Silverman installed in his place, crown cocked B-boy style to one side of his head and tossing Benjamins at assistants' desks as he strutted towards his corner office to the beat of Notorious B.I.G.'s "Ten Crack Commandments." Reilly would quickly land back on his feet, however, appointed FOX's president of entertainment. Buoyed by a little something he likes to call "American Fuck Idol You Money," he's been playing around with the dusty concepts of a rigid development season, telling reporters at TCA that the network plans on dividing theirs in two. What's more, with finding the next hit comedy a top priority, Reilly is throwing all office-bound pitching notions out the window, instead pulling the equivalent of when your 3rd grade teacher used to announce, "It's such a beautiful day outside, I thought we'd hold class in the park!" THR reports:
In another twist to the development model — as a way to boost the creativity of comedy writers — Fox is scrapping the decades-old ritual of creators going to the network executives' offices to pitch their ideas.
"We're not going to take most of our comedy pitches in our office," Reilly said. "We're going to go out and meet the writers on their own turf, and that could be at a restaurant (or) their house, anything that gets it out of a sterile environment."
The network also will be offering comedy writers a little money to go and film their ideas, making the footage a part of the pitch.
"I feel like right now there is an opportunity for young voices to come up," Reilly said.
This, of course, is an unbelievable opportunity for green writers to sprout up from the scorched earth of the WGA strike. But while Reilly's idea of "pitching outside the box" might be limited to listening intently to the outline of a family-in-space sitcom at the Century City food court, we'd encourage you to maximize the site-specific nature of your meeting—say, by having Reilly and the gang join you for a midnight tour of Hollywood Forever, where the spooky mood will be perfectly set to pitch Zombie Accountants and its hilarious tagline, "Braaaains....And refunds!"