Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: The Tropic Thunder gang is reuniting, this time on television. HBO has greenlighted Documental, a half-hour comedy pilot written and to be directed by Thunder co-writer/executive producer Justin Theroux. Theroux will star in the project with Thunder co-star, British comedian/writer/producer Steve Coogan. The two will executive produce with Thunder director/co-writer/producer Ben Stiller as well as Paul Simms, who serves as a consulting producer on the HBO comedy Bored to Death, and 3 Arts’ Michael Rotenberg and Nick Frenkel. Stiller’s producer partner Stuart Cornfeld at Red Hour Films, who also was a producer on Thunder, will serve as consultant on Documental, which had been in the works at HBO for awhile. The pilot, which will film in London, stars Theroux as a documentary filmmaker who tracks down his idol, an equally inept filmmaker (Coogan), and documents his return to his craft. The pickup comes on the heels of HBO’s pilot order last week to Armando Iannucci’s comedy Veep, which is talks with Julia Louis-Dreyfus for the lead. The network’s other recent pilots include Alan Ball’s All Signs of Death, the John Logan/Kathryn Bigelow drama Miraculous Year, which is in post-production, and the untitled Lena Dunham/JuddApatow comedy, which is gearing up for production. Actor/writer Theroux, repped by UTA and 3 Arts, most recently penned Iron Man 2 and is voicing a character on the upcoming DreamWorks Animation movie Megamind. Documental would mark the U.S. series debut for Coogan, a popular TV actor in his native Britain. This also marks WME-repped Stiller’s first pilot at HBO where he recurred as himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

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