Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: HBO has bought Valentine, a half-hour comedy script from writer Bryan Sipe and producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, with Kevin Bacon attached to executive produce and potentially star. Additionally, Sipe has signed on to do a re-write on the Parkes/MacDonald-produced feature The Kid Who Knew Too Much for Paramount, a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1934 and 1956 movies.

Valentine, which Sipe wrote on spec, centers on Johnny Valentine, the role that would be played by Bacon. With three ex wives and his glory days behind him, Johnny Valentine is the new voice of talk radio. He’s not on the left, the right, or the middle, he’s on the bottom. Sipe is executive producing with Parkes/MacDonald Prods.’ Parkes, MacDonald and Ted Gold as well as Bacon and his manager David Schiff.

This is the second HBO half-hour project that is being developed for Bacon to star, along with a single-camera comedy based on Clint McCown’s 1995 book The Member-Guest, which has a new writer, Neil LaBute. Additionally, Bacon is executive producing the Showtime drama series project The Booths, a drama about Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth and his brother. On the feature side, WME-repped Bacon just wrapped Billy Bob Thornton’s Jayne Mansfield’s Car and will next do R.I.P.D. Sipe, repped by UTA and manager Brad Mendelsohn, first worked with UTA-repped Parkes/MacDonald last year when he developed with the company drama pilot script Americano for NBC.

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