Amazon chooses first original TV series

Betas

Amazon has selected the pilots that it will take to series with a John Goodman comedy, another from True Blood director Michael Lehmann and three kids series.

The five series come from a pool of 14 pilots that Amazon launched on its Prime Instant Video service in the US and Lovefilm service in the UK and Amazon said it selected the shows taken to series based on customer feedback.
Political comedy Alpha House stars Goodman (Treme, Roseanne) and will feature a cameo from Bill Murray. It was created by Garry Trudeau who is best known as the cartoonist behind Doonesbury.

Betas, meanwhile, follows four roommates trying to get a social media start-up off the ground. Lehmann will direct and produce with Alan Cohen (King of the Hill), Alan Freedland (Due Date) and Michael London (Sideways).
The three kids series are Annebots, Creative Galaxy and Tumbleaf.

Annebots was created by J.J. Johnson (Dino Dan) and follows a young scientist and her three robot helpers. Creative Galaxy, from the creator of Blue’s Clues, Angela Santomero, is an interactive arts and crafts series and Tumbleaf is a preschool show from stop-motion studio Bix Pix.

Production will start on all of the series this year and into early 2014 and Amazon Studios director Roy Price said that more original pilots and series will be greenlit following the first batch.

“It’s exciting to see the process in motion, doing exactly what we set out to do. The success of this first set of pilots has given us the push to try this approach with even more shows—this is just the beginning,” he said.

Show’s that were piloted but not greenlit include Sony’s Zombieland, Onion News Empire and Browsers, a single camera comedy from 3 Arts Entertainment and David Javerbaum (The Daily Show) previously in development at CBS.

Kids shows that didn’t make the cut include Sarah Solves It from Carol Greenwald of US broadcaster WGBH and Angela Santomero.