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13 years after the premiere of Sex and the City, HBO will launch another comedy about single girlfriends who are a decade younger than Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha. The pay cable network has picked up to series Girls, Lena Dunham’s comedy pilot executive produced by Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner. The 24-year-old prodigy Dunham wrote, directed and starred in the pilot, about the assorted humiliations and rare triumphs of three girlfriends in their early 20s: Hannah (Dunham), an eternal intern at a publishing house in SoHo and a hopeful writer; Marnie (Allison Williams), a sexy, bitchy and ambitious assistant at a slick political PR firm whose goal id to practice environmental law; and Jessa (Jemima Kirke), a space cadet with hippie tendencies who wants to be an artist/educator. The parallels with Sex and the City don’t stop here. Like Carrie, Hannah has a handsome carpenter as a boyfriend too, played by Adam Driver. Dunham, who served as co-executive producer on the pilot, is being upped to executive producer for the series alongside Apatow and Konner. She has been garnering awards attention for her second feature Tiny Furniture. Illene S. Landress is joining the project as a co-executive producer. The series marks the professional debut of Williams, daughter of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who booked the HBO pilot shortly after graduating from Yale last year. Additionally, the project co-stars another famous offspring, David Mamet’s daughter Zosia. HBO recently passed on two drama pilots, All Signs of Death and Miraculous Year. On the comedy side, the Justin Theroux/Steve Coogan pilot Documental has been completed, while the Armando Iannucci’s Veep, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is gearing up for production. The Diane Keaton starrer Tilda is still awaiting its fate after a backup script order and pilot reshoots.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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HBO is piling up on the series.
Veep
Girls
Documental
Veep
Tilda
Luck
Enlightened
Game of Thrones
Boardwalk Empire
Treme
Funny or Die Presents
The Ricky Gervais Show
How to Make It in America
Bored to Death
Hung
Eastbound & Down
The Life & Times of Tim
True Blood
Big Love
Entourage
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Even though they don’t program a nightly schedule, they have just as many series as the big networks.Hell, they have twice as many series as The CW.Almost 3 times as many shows than TNT, USA, TBS and FX.
What are you even talking about?I was making a point that a network that only has programming on Sundays and sometimes on Mondays and Fridays, has just as many shows as the networks, who air shows every night.Where exactly are they going to put these shows.
Take the time to comprise the list?You type in HBO on Wikipedia and you have the list in 2 seconds.It doesn’t take any knowledge to do that.What is your problem?
Good to see a young talent getting a shot at a series. Congrats. I hope this series is a success.
Not a hater here, but not sure how the word “prodigy” applies to Dunham.
Congrats to her on her success, but in this day and age of DIY filmmaking, a 24 year old making an indie film (even a well-received one) is hardly the feat of a prodigy, especially when that 24 year old has access to resources and well-connected parents (as Dunham does).
Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein” at 18, Mozart was writing symphonies at 8, etc…etc…
Amen.
Orson Welles directed “Citizen Kane” at 24. Welles qualifies as a prodigy in my book. “Tiny Furniture” is no “Citizen Kane”.
hey yonderman, rule three – “don’t get your facts wrong”, Welles wasn’t 24 when he made Kane. GTFO.
Right, he was 27. Sorry! You’re still a douche Quincy. That hasn’t changed.
These comments are ridiculous. She made TINY FURNITURE for 45,000. Why are you people comparing it to CITIZEN KANE? Did any of you see the pilot? I doubt it. HBO keeps their pilots under lock and key. Why would you judge a project based on a press release? Save your “reviews” for after the show has aired. Until then, try to see 2011 as a time for your own contribution to the world. Everyone is waiting for your terrific Larry Sanders spec to come back out.
I’ve heard she is a very nice person and you are correct that she hasn’t made any of the prodigy comments herself, so yes, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt.
You are attacking Dunham as if she called herself a prodigy. Dont remember her ever being quoted saying that. It was the article that did. I dont think anyone was comparing her to Orson Welles or Mozart or anything. She made a movie that got a lot of attention. Be happy for her. Maybe your screenplay that no one will read isn’t as good as you think it is.
It’s interesting that here and on KCRW’s The Business it is acknowledged that Tiny Furniture is her second feature and yet the Spirit Awards have it nom’d for First Screenplay and First Feature.
Best of luck to Lena though. She’s fun and talented.
I watched Tiny Furniture and could not for the life of me figure out why this girl is getting so much attention. She’s not particularly original or fresh or… anything. I don’t get it. But, this is a subjective medium after all. So maybe I’m just in the minority? Hope the series is much funnier.
you are not in the minority. the movie sucks. it moans and muses on lofty tripe while its plot goes nowhere. this is naegle servicing her old shop and one of its biggest clients, nothing more
So I assume this means you have viewed a pilot that no one has seen yet and made a judgement and decision that this was a favor and is not good at all. Why dont you save your opinion until you can base it on the actual pilot/series?
Congrats to all the daughters of celebrity!
yep. another nail in the coffin for those of us who weren’t born into this.
Funny thing about those commenting on her “connections”. If it were that easy, wouldn’t every industry parent’s son and daughter be able to do this? Where are they?
working… don’t worry. nepotism is alive and well.
Did you think that perhaps they went off to do things outside the business?? GASP!!!!!!
And you’re an idiot if you think being a celebrity kid doesn’t get them special treatment and doors held wide open for them. Than again….you’re probably a spoiled little celebrity kid who is just too high and drunk to leave your house to get anything done but comment on blogs!
With all due respect,
If HBO of all places is going to do a show about young females, WHY CAN’T IT BE ORIGIONAL?! And why can’t it be a LITTLE risky and unprivilaged? Just seems awful safe and repetetive for HBO.
Seriously thank you for mentioning that some of these women are show biz legacies.
I watched a half hour of “Tiny Furniture” on Pay-per-view the other night. It’s sort of amazing how predictable a movie can be in terms of what you read about it and where it got it’s start and…
I don’t know from “mumblecore” so I don’t know if this is like mumblecore, but it was a movie I was watching, pleasantly watching, seeing incredibly naturalistic acting, that required absolutely nothing of the actors, except being incredibly naturalistic. Which is not easy. Not really. I mean, if you’re IN an environment where the director is known to you and very supportive and goes with a “you can’t really DO anything wrong, so fuck ‘pressure’” attitude – which I personally think is the way to go, you can see how these folks achieved this “I’m talking to you, you’re talking to me, we’re talking” and it’s sort of glib and a little funny but not, you know, Woody Allen funny, cause we’re not comedians here we’re more… “WAY underplayers of shiftless, vague, sort-of-but-not-really-ambitious-twentysomething-new-yorkers-who-would-rather-die-than-seem-uncool… dramatically inert creations.”
So, I turned it off. When I studied acting, oh, a long time ago, my teacher, Bill Esper, made me aware that acting was a “series of moments, you create them, then, you string together.” That’s a performance. You know, peaks, valleys, the in between stuff? Think “Brokeback Mountain” which I hadn’t seen in a long time and watched the other night front to end. Wow. what a group of incredibly talented people, and Health Ledger can rest in peace cause he was as good as it gets. MOMENTS.
Incedibly underplayed, but with clearly delineated MOMENTS. It fucking destroys you, what Ledger does in that movie, and the way Ang Lee supports what he does, and focuses on just the right things, the best things he does, and puts it together with an incredibly moving, incredibly simple score, emphasized at JUST the right times.
If I don’t see a single memorable moment, truly funny, truly interesting, unpredictable, truly moving MOMENT – in over half hour, I start to realize “Wow, this is boring.”
Go big or go home. Please pay this woman a ton of money so she can afford to go study with one of the last truly great acting teachers and learn something.
Since this is an English-language Web site could someone please translate this for me?
An eternal intern? In New York? Hm. Does that character have rich parents? I mean, her boyfriend is a carpenter, not the best-paying of career choices, I am sad to say. Will they do it like “Friends”, where all of them have low-paying jobs, yet live in really nice apartments?
And isn’t Marshall from “How I met your Mother” already doing the whole “I am in corporate, but I really want to save the planet” thing (minus the bitchiness)
Not bitching here, myself, just actually wondering. I mean, I am wondering about the scary amount of real life eternal interns as well.
Growing up outside New York, I had a friend whose (un-mob-connected) father made a good, middle-class living as a carpenter. These days, you can make around $60,000 to $70,000 in the city and thereabouts. Decidedly not a fortune but nothing to sneeze at.
Actually, according to the figures published by the New York Daily News (link @ sig), in Manhattan, a $60,000 salary is equivalent to someone making $26,092 in Atlanta in terms of cost of living.
And no, I am not dissing on carpenters.
I am wondering, though, not merely with this premise here, but also a lot of other premises (universally almost always the “hip” premises)how these characters actually pay for stuff, if they don’t have wealthy parents.
I’ve been in New York a couple of times on business trips, and I believe that breathing costs money there. Actually, no, I am pretty sure that I saw a sign there that said that.
So, that would be 40K after taxes- When the average rent of a 2 bedroom in NYC is 3600K (no doorman) And a Loft In the hood she grew up is an easy 2.5-4 Million. Unless that Carpenter is Jesus and he has a well paying exec position with full health and dental bringing in 150K min> Yea- they stick to the “Gritty- realistic side of NyC…..
Her second, yes SECOND feature is charming and original- but prodigy? Seriously?
I think the acclaim and such declarations of “prodigy” are a sign of how desperate Hollywood is for originality.
It’s a sad sign of the times that a young filmmaker who is original is suddenly declared a prodigy.
Prodigy? Hardly. Tiny Furniture was the most over-hyped dreck I have ever seen. I’ve seem better films at college film festivals.
Nepotism? A member of the right social set? Yup. This appears to be Ms. Dunham’s trump card.
I guarantee you this…. if Lena Dunham were a young black, Asian or Latina woman who, based on Tiny Furniture, was getting this much “acclaim” and “opportunity” this board would be boiling over with people saying she was benefitting from some sort of pernicious, undeserved “affirmative action.”
But I guess when the person in question is young and female and white (and I suspect Jewish, too!) then she’s “a prodigy”
What an industry! Must be nice to be a member of the tribe.
Lena is not Jewish, but you certainly are racist.
Yeah, she is Jewish, actually. Neither here nor there, but check your facts.
Looking forward to seeing a buddy show about women by a woman – I hope it’s as funny as Tiny Furniture and maybe a little bit more optimistic.
Really enjoyed her work even if I prob wish I had her same opportunities. Her dad is cool.
Really HBO? Even the jobs of the girls are the same. Are you that desperate for another Sex and the City?
I have to check every Lena Durnham post on deadline just to read the comments from all the people who hate her work (her). Her show got picked up. She has talent.
Talent is the potential to do good work, but it’s not the same as DOING good work. All the talent in the world doesn’t change the fact that this pilot was not good and the series won’t be either. Call me a hater or whatever makes you feel better, but it was not a good script. The end.
Always been HBO’s problem. Let’s push the button here and do something different. You know what young girls want to see? PEOPLE STRUGGLING just like them. People who don’t benefit from nepotism or weath. Girl’s who are concerned with GETTING BY, not living off Daddy’s money so called, “growing up” in NY. PUSH THE BUTTON PLEASE
Did you read the pilot? The girls are not wealthy girls who grew up in NY? Lena’s characters parents come visit her in the pilot from out of state. They all share an apartment on the lower east side (which doesnt look like the apartment in friend).
Lots of vitriol toward this young girl whose one project is more interesting than half the current HBO lineup. She’s in good hands with Jenni and Judd, and it’s a way better use of Judd’s time than doing that Pee-Wee movie which, if it gets done at all, is gonna stink to high heaven. Don’t read blogs, Lena. Keep focused and keep writing. I loved the pilot.
This is what I hate about these websites. People comment and rip people apart and say negative things – without having facts. This pilot has not been seen by anyone yet, I bet even Nellie hasnt seen it, so how does everyone know it sucks or know what the tone of it is or know that it is problematic. That is right. They don’t. Why don’t people be supportive our business in general. We should all want new shows to work. As for Lena, she is a young woman who started making short films in college. Shot a movie on her own and then shot Tiny Furniture for no money and no favors. She is the daughter of two artists in NY – not a child of the industry. Her work has attracted the admiration of Scott Rudin and Judd Apatow. Must be something there. The reality is this is a subjective business. Some people will like her show, some people won’t – but there is no need to take a steaming shit on anything. I feel like these boards are just filled with negativity. You dont like something, dont watch it. As for Naegle doing favors for her former agency – I believe this is the first series from that company that HBO has picked up. They have picked up some from ICM, CAA and WME I know. But most importantly, lets be happy for people – not negative and shitty. And most importantly – its one thing if people have seen it and have an opinion, but since no one has – lets wait to criticize. Who knows – maybe you won’t.
Actually, that is not quite correct.
The business has a sharp divide, and everybody should understand that divide and not delude themselves.
(A) The first part of the business, the B2B part, otherwise also known as “getting a movie or a TV show made” is entirely subjective and decided by very, very few people.
(B) The second part of the business, the B2C part, otherwise known as “how many people will actually PAY to see this” is entirely objective, it is quantatitive. Which means it can be measured. It can be put into spreadsheets. It is when it is time to pay the piper.
Considering the ratio of projects that pass through category (A) and then fail massively in category (B), one might find it very easy to argue that the subjective opinions of those very few in (A) have a serious disconnect with what works in category (B).
Please note that I am not stating this as a way of assessing the quality of the products themselves, generally speaking, for quality itself – outside the parameters of craftsmanship, i.e. do you have proper loighting, does the director of photography know what they are doing etc. – is again entirely subjective.
yes, she is the daughter of two artists, but they are hardly starving artists…more like two already rich people who are able to do art as a “living” because of their pre-existing trust funds. she shot a movie (in her parents tribeca loft) for no money because she was able to fund her own project, which many DIY film-making 24 year olds don’t have the resources to do. was lena born into the coppolas? no, but she certainly was born into a family that is highly connected. i think she is talented, but she certainly is no struggling “prodigy”.
I dig her chubbiness. I don’t like all girls in entertainment to look the same.
But – good god – Tiny Furniture was booooooring.
The show HAS to be different to get an audience. Maybe it will be.
I support my family producing live television. (I like the gig but there are easier ways to make a living). Occasionally I feel jealous when I hear or read about the offspring of Hollywood royalty effortlessly walking into an awesome production deal — one that I would kill to have.
But I know that producing decent TV is difficult no matter whose womb you occupied or how well connected your Dad is. Ultimately the material needs to work. If you create something that is funny or moves me, I don’t care who you are or how you got the gig. All I ask is that If you are fortunate enough to get or the opportunity, don’t fuck it up.
To be perfectly honest, this show frankly sounds terrible. Just awful. I’m 100% certain I won’t be watching it.
Tiny Furniture works because there is something about Lena that is captivating to watch. She’s honest and she’s brave at an age where many women have already lost their voice.
Is she a prodigy? Nope. Will she be able to pull off a series? Who knows.
But she has talent and the support of some of the best in the business. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how she got here, the real test is what she makes of these opportunities.
I wish her the best.
I don’t understand. She’s connected to the business, 24 years old, and has written something completely derivative and unoriginal. So where does the prodigy part come in?!? And why is HBO doing this?
We need something NEW! Not four more whiny bitches complaining – four that don’t exist in the real world in any way. Ugh.
oh and Lena is starring as well…as? Guess what? A hopeful writer!!!
Fuck this business.
i dare anyone to sit through her actual first feature
Tiny Furniture was pretty good BUT this script was horrible, horrible, horrible, repeat. Assume there will be a massive rewrite by anybody but Dunham.