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Up All Night creator Emily Spivey has signed a two-year overall deal at 20th Century Fox Television. The pact comes two months after Spivey exited her NBC/Universal TV comedy series. Under the deal, Spivey will work on current series as well as develop new projects for the studio. Her first assignment will be serving as a co-executive producer on 20th TV’s upcoming Fox animated series Murder Police. This brings her back to the beginning of her career when she did gigs on another 20th TV/Fox animated series, King Of The Hill, as well as Fox’s late-night-sketch show MadTV. From there, she moved onto NBC’s Saturday Night Live where she spent a decade, most recently as writing supervisor, and shared in the show’s 2002 writing Emmy. Spivey also did a stint on NBC’s Parks & Recreation. “Emily is one of those unique, funny female voices that we have had our eyes on for some time—we’ve been big fans ever since she worked for us on King Of The Hill at the very start of her career,” 20th TV chairman Gary Newman said. “We believe she has a hit in her, and we want to be the studio which helps her achieve it.”
20th TV has been successful cultivating female writing talent and getting comedy series by female creators on the air, most recently with New Girl (Elizabeth Meriwether), Don’t Trust The B— (Nahnatchka Khan), Ben & Kate (Dana Fox) and the upcoming How To Live With Your Parents (Claudia Lonow).
Meanwhile, Up All Night has fallen apart since Spivey left. NBC had planned to retool the series as a multi-camera sitcom with a five-episode order but that plan suffered a major setback when star Christina Applegate left two weeks ago. NBC subsequently scaled back the plan to one multi-camera episode without Applegate before scrapping the idea altogether. Co-star Will Arnett already signed on for a pilot in second position, CBS’ untitled Greg Garcia, with fellow co-star Maya Rudolph fielding a ton of overall deal and pilot offers. Spivey is represented by UTA and Hansen Jacobson.
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Gary -
Flush this $$ down the toilet.
“Up All Night” was never funny, and I doubt Emily has been saving the funny for shows from your studio.
Your multi-million dollar deal for Goldman & Donovan has turned into an epic failure. As part of the deal, they were hired to run “Ben & Kate,” and were fired a few months into it. And the show turned out to be an epic failure.
Rupert’s going to be asking about all these sketchy deals with UTA clients real soon…
Clearly someone at another agency. I work at Twentieth and their were multiple studio bidders on both Spivey and Goldman & Donovan. As for other UTA Deals – yeah, Levitan and Bays & Thomas have been really sketchy for us.
I blame the demise of Up All Night on the idiots at NBComcast. It’s only going to get worse now that they’re going after 100% ownership.
If they want to make MURDER POLICE a hit get POLICE SQUAD and SLEDGE HAMMER people in there.
KUDOS GARY! Once again you’ve thrown wads of cash to an overrated mediocre writing talent. I’m sure she’ll create more shows they have all the wit and hilarity of Up All Night!
Spivey is one of the coolest, funniest women I have ever worked with. A genuine comedic talent. This is a very smart move for 20th.
Spivey is talented, funny and generous. Let’s hope 20th doesn’t saddle her with a lame showrunner so her real talent can shine. Go, Emily!
This is the woman that “created” a show (psst…there was no concept to the show hence why it fell apart!) with very talented funny actors and churned a woefully unfunny bore. I’m AMAZED after such a public flop and falling out she’s signing a deal. More power to her but wait for the next flimsy ‘concept’ to go nowhere.
“This is a woman WHO ‘created’ a show…” People are ‘who’, things are ‘that’.
Anyway, the show had a great concept. I think NBComcast over-involvement is what ruined it.
TSShannon? Writer/Director of ‘Harold’?
Don’t listen to ‘em Em! These comment sections are a safe haven for the bitter and disenfranchised who somehow think the best way to make themselves feel better is to tear down others instead of actually taking constructive steps themselves to SUCCEED. Twentieth has great taste! Congrats!
It’s amazing how idiotic these hater comments are. So uninformed. I’ve worked with Emily and the girl is so f’n funny. The only surprise here is that she didn’t already have a deal.
Hey JDumphy – did you mean to write “THERE” were multiple other offers?
And I did not mean to impugn Gary’s taste only by pointing out the lame deals he’s made with UTA clients. The one with Liz Astrof was a big loser too. But having been bored to tears by multiple episodes of Up All Night, I’ m sure this one will be as unsuccessful as the others.
Remember, Gary + Dana are the geniuses who let Chuck Lorre walk to WB, where he’s only made the studio a billion dollars. Let’s see if they mention that in their next ADORKABLE holiday card.
That’s nice that Emily has fans out there, but let’s just look at the facts:
–The original script for Up All Night was a boring mess. But Lorne Michaels was able to get Christina Applegate on board, which gave it a green light.
–Jon Pollack joined the project, and heavily rewrote it. (Fans of Emily, you”ll agree with this, right?)
–Show picked up, then retooled again to make it take place at a talk show.
–Show debuts to decent reviews, albeit ones that say the original pilot is terrible. (Easy to look up.)
– Show gets lousy ratings in year one. Pollack leaves show. Replaced by two new show runners, who again retool series for year two. Ratings again bad. New show runners exit. Another show runner brought in. show retooled again.
– Show falls completely apart before new episodes can be filmed.
So, it was an unmitigated disaster. Fine, these things happen. But why on Earth would you give the creator an overall deal out of this? Wouldn’t it seem that there were better investments to make? What jumped out at Gary Newman to say “We HAVE to have this person!”
Maybe Gary is brilliant in seeing hidden talent. Or maybe this is just the lousy way all American corporations run. But when another year rolls around, and everyone complains about how there are no good comedies on network TV, maybe it will be time to look at deals like these.
Wow, Gary’s been a big fan of Emily Spivey since “king of the hill!” Seeing as she was there for only half a season twelve years ago, he’s got an amazing memory.
man you guys are really silly. shameful, angry trolls. she got an overall deal because she is wildly talented. one of the greatest female writers ever at SNL. almost no network shows work. this is clear. use your heads. but, you keep trying with people who are actually funny. and she is.
You people are all a huge bummer who don’t understand how network TV comedy is made. Emily is hilarious and has a very specific voice. On Up All Night she got steamrolled by too many cooks in the kitchen and she was too nice to raise a big stink about it. I hope with her next project her voice is allowed to come through.
Good LORD this comment section is full of hateful bitter assholes. Emily Spivey is hilarious and super talented and deserving of every good thing. Though I am seriously impressed that you dicks can type your heinous comments at the same time you’re putting all your most recent “passed on” scripts through the shredder. That takes coordination.
I’m not a writer. I’m just a viewer who wants to come home and laugh at good half hour TV. But I watched “Up All Night,” and never laughed. The problems of the characters seemed so trifling and irrelevant. Who would care about these people on the show with their assistants and fabulous jobs? And judging by the ratings, most viewers weren’t laughing either.
Comfortable people rarely make for the best comedy. Gilda Radner, Archie Bunker, Roseanne Connor, Sheldon Cooper – none are shiny and neat. As I watched “Up All Night,” all I could wonder was: These people have it all. Where’s the funny?
There’s an insular, self-satisfied quality to Hollywood that’s expressing itself in these totally un-interesting half hours on the air this year (Partners, Ben & Kate, 1600 Penn, etc.) “Up All Night” seemed to be as clear an expression of this as any show. No wonder they’ve all failed.
It’s not personal about Emily. But the system seems broken and corrupt, and this is just the most blatant and recent example of it. And when studios continue to reward failure with multi-million dollar deals, we continue to get horrible shows. That makes me sad.