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EXCLUSIVE: The Office and Parks & Recreation executive producer Greg Daniels is teaming with a writer from each of his two NBC series to develop new animated comedy projects for the network. One of the projects will be written/executive by The Office co-executive producer/co-star Mindy Kaling, who will also voice a character, the other – by Parks & Recreation producer Alan Yang. Daniels and his manager/producing partner Howard Klein will executive produce both comedies. The Mindy Kaling project revolves around a girls high-school volleyball team. 
Alan Yang’s toon is about a group of 20something guys sharing a house in Los Angeles’ upscale community of Hancock Park. For King Of The Hill co-creator Greg Daniels, returning to his animated roots was important when he closed a new overall production deal with Universal Television this past summer. “One of our focuses will be to return Greg to primetime animation, for which he had particular success with King of the Hill when he and I worked together at FBC,” NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt said in announcing the deal. In addition to the two animated projects, Daniels has a live-action comedy in the works at NBC, a U.S. version of the UK series Friday Night Dinner, which is looking for a writer. Kaling, repped by UTA and 3 Arts, will next be seen in the feature comedy The Five-Year Engagement. Yang’s first feature, Gay Dude, comes out next summer. He is with WME.
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I’m a big fan of Mindy Kaling and also Parks and Rec, but my 2 cents… Greg Daniels is going about this all wrong and the shows he develops ultimately won’t work. All the breakout animated shows are created by animators or artists. And Greg Daniels should know because he worked with one of the best — Mike Judge. King of the Hill, Simpsons, South Park, Beavis and Butt-Head, Family Guy, American Dad, Spongebob all were conceived by artists/animators first. Sure many incredibly talented writers came aboard and helped shaped those hits. But man it sure seems like Greg Daniels is going about this bass-ackwards.
This is accurate, but you should also know that there is more than one way to skin a cat. A person could always hire a great animator to illustrate their characters once they have the tone and world via the script and show bible.
Animation tends to work when the characters are interesting to look at and the voices work. Once that is established, then you just put all the basic sitcom tropes into it and make it work.
No, there really isn’t another way to skin the cat when the cat is “drawn” and the guy creating the show can’t draw it.
Absolutely true. All successful primetime cartoons had the animator as at least co-creator. Otherwise, you wind up with Allen Gregory and Fish Police.
That is correct. Why comedy joke writers think they can job in and suddenly be “animated show creators” is the ultimate in narcissism.
Can’t NBC just finally come up with something original instead of constantly borrowing show ideas from the UK and other countries? I mean…really?!
Yeah! who the hell wants to see another All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Office or In Treatment! more Whitney’s, please!
Name one huge breakout animated hit that was created by a writer first. You can’t. All the great shows began with artist/animators (who of course collaborated with writers/producers).
There is not one, but even the executives who were sitting there in their armchairs when Simpsons and Family Guy were being made fail to learn that. They are still “oooi Mitch Hurwitz! Arrested Development was good! Oh Jonah Hill, he’s funny! and Napolean Dynamite, that movie made a lot of money, 10 years ago!”
Yang is a great writer, great guy, but more importantly has a mean baby hook.
Great to see two minority writers scoring a deal. Want more diversity talent to get hired to write, direct, produce, and act.
Correct me if i’m wrong, but I don’t think The Simpsons was created by an artist/animator in the same way as the rest. They started as interstitial cartoons on The Tracey Ullman show voiced by the cast of the show. I think it was more of a script driven show.
Um. The Simpsons was created by Matt Groening. He’s a artist. He also co-created Futurama. He’s one of the wealthy guys in Hollywood.