Weekly World News Gets a Six-Episode Comedy, Paid for by Private Investors
A comedy series based on the Weekly World News tabloid is going into production with a six-episode season. The money comes from outside the big studios. Weekly World News Studios raised $2.5 million from six private investors to finance it, according to Deadline, which reported the news on 23 October.
The show's creative team has a clear link to a well-known comedy. Robert Ben Garant, co-creator of Reno 911!, will be co-showrunner and executive producer. A showrunner is the person who runs the day-to-day making of a series. Cathy Shim joins him in the same role. She is a Reno 911! alumna and a frequent collaborator of Garant's.
Greg D'Alessandro, Editor-in-Chief of Weekly World News, will work on the series as writer and executive producer. The show follows reporters from the paper as they chase stories too outside-the-box for mainstream newsrooms.
The style is also borrowed from Reno 911!. The series will be shot as an improvised mockumentary, a comedy shot like a documentary where much of the dialogue is made up on the spot rather than scripted word for word.
Filming is set to start in the first week of February in Simi Valley, California. The producers chose Los Angeles cast and crew over filming in New Mexico or New Jersey. That choice has a money side. The series will not qualify for a California tax credit, because it falls short of the state's current minimum budget of $1 million per episode.
The show is not yet with a platform or distributor. A distributor is the company that sells a series to broadcasters and streaming services. The producers plan to pitch it to them once there is filmed footage to show.
For the people working on it, the next milestone is concrete: a February start, a six-episode run, and a crew hired in Los Angeles. Whether the series finds a home after that will depend on what the cameras capture first.
