Veep creator Armando Iannucci and HBO are collaborating once again as the premium cable service provider has just greenlighted the creator's brand new comedy series. The producer extraordinaire has turned his sights on films, having written a political satire similar to Veep, The Death of Stalin. But he is ready to make his much-anticipated small screen comeback via the upcoming HBO project which he has both written and executive produced. Currently, the show has a working title of Avenue 5 and is said to going to be set in the future and out of Earth melding sci-fi and comedy in one show.
Over the last several years HBO has been the home of some of the most popular and critically-acclaimed comedy series like the Emmy-nominated Silicon Valley, Dwayne Johnson's Ballers, Issa Rae’s praised Insecure, Sarah Jessica Parker's Divorce, Pete Holmes and Judd Apatow team-up project, Crashing,; and Bill Hader’s upcoming Barry. But arguably, its flagship series when it comes to the genre is the Juia Louis-Dreyfus-led Washington-set political satire which has just nabbed five more awards at this year's recently held 69th Primetime Emmy Awards. The show, however, is slated to for its last hurrah via its seventh season scheduled to rollout in 2018, but HBO will look to continue their partnership with Iannucci shortly after.
The tip has come from Deadline who reports that the comedy show set on a spaceship is currently gearing to start principal photography in London sometime next year. On top of the pilot, HBO is also said to have ordered backup scripts for the show proving the pay cabler's high hopes on Iannucci's next big venture.
Avenue 5 marks the Scottish writer and producer's TV comeback following his departure from Veep at the end of the show's fourth season due to long and tiring commutes between his hometown of London and Los Angeles where the show is being shot. During his stint with the political satire, he won two Emmys after being succeeded by Seinfeld alum David Mandel. Despite this, he is obviously able to maintain a good working relationship with HBO with his newest endeavor being picked up by the broadcast station. Bonus perk for him that the upcoming the sci-fi/comedy series is going to be primarily based in London, which favors Iannucci's living set-up.
The order follows other projects recently greenlit by HBO from people they have previously worked with including one from the showrunner of the recently concluded The Leftovers, Damon Lindelof, who is currently actively developing a small screen adaptation of The Watchmen. Game of Thrones' (which like Veep, only has one last season under its belt) proponents David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, on the other hand, are busy working on their controversial alternate drama series, Confederate.
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We'll keep you updated on the development of Avenue 5 as more information becomes available.
Source: Deadline