EXCLUSIVE: God Friended Me creators Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt are returning to CBS, teaming with the former The Neighborhood writer-producer Laura Moran, James Wan’s Atomic Monster and CBS Studios for Area 51.
The half-hour workplace comedy, now in development, is single-camera, indicating that CBS continues to opportunistically take shorts in the single-camera comedy space where it has had a lot of success with the recently departed juggernaut Young Sheldon and ongoing hit Ghosts.
Last year, CBS ordered only multi-camera comedy pilots, and its two new comedy series for next season are both multi-cam, Poppa’s House and the Young Sheldon spinoff Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.
Multi-camera comedies are cheaper to produce, making them attractive for broadcast networks as budgets get squeezed amid declining linear ratings. For studios, broadcast single-camera comedies are hard to justify financially because of their higher cost and depressed network license fees.
Deadline recently asked CBS Studios President David Stapf whether the studio, which co-produces Ghosts and produces two of CBS’s three multi-camera comedies, The Neighborhood and Poppa’s House, could do another single-camera comedy for the network.
“It’s pretty challenging,” he said, adding, “You never know. I hate to say no, we’ll never do another single camera for CBS and then something greats can walk in the door and we’re going to do so.”
Written and executive produced by Lilien, Wynbrandt and Moran, Area 51 follows the humans and Aliens that work together at the country’s most mysterious place.
Executive producing for Atomic Monster are Wan, Michael Clear and Rob Hackett.
This marks the first foray into half-hour comedy for Lilien and Wynbrandt. In addition to creating and executive producing dramedy God Friended Me, which ran on CBS for two seasons and earned them a Humanitas Prize, the duo developed and executive produced NBC’s Quantum Leap reboot and served as executive producers/co-showrunners on another NBC sci-fi drama, La Brea. Their credits also include Fox’s Alcatraz, which they co-created, and Gotham and CBS procedurals Hawaii Five-0 and CSI: NY. Lilien and Wynbrandt are repped by CAA, Range and Todd Rubenstein.
Atomic Monster is with CAA and Seth Michael. Moran, whose series writing credits also include Harley Quinn, Undateable and The Dangerous Book For Boys, is repped by UTA and Melissa Fox.
