Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: Ben Stiller is teaming with another comedy multihyphenate, Bonnie Hunt, for a comedy project at ABC that will star the comedienne. Hunt will write the half-hour, titled compliKATEd, with her writing partner and frequent collaborator Don Lake. The ensemble comedy centers on Kate (Hunt), a confidently insecure woman with a complicated life. It is produced by Stiller’s Red Hour Television, Hunt’s Bob & Alice Prods and ABC Studios, where Red Hour TV is under an overall deal. Hunt and Lake will executive produce with Red Hour TV’s Stiller, Debbie Liebling and Stuart Cornfeld.

This marks Hunt’s return to ABC and ABC Studios, where she toplined the 2002 comedy series Life With Bonnie, also co-created/executive produced with Lake. The two also co-wrote together the 2006 ABC/ABC Studios comedy pilot Let Go, directed by and starring Hunt.

This is the third ABC sale for Red Hour TV in its maiden development season, along with single-camera comedies Please Knock, written by Kevin Napier and loosely based on Stiller’s life, and The Notorious Mollie Flowers, written by Adam Resnick. Red Hour TV was launched at the end of last year when Stiller and Cornfeld’s Red Hour Films signed an overall deal with ABC Studios and brought in Liebling to run the new TV division. compliKATEd, which has received a script commitment, was packaged by WME.

ABC has several comedy projects with female stars in the works for next season, including half-hours toplined by Jane Fonda and Mandy Moore.

TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.