Amazon announces that Woody Allen at 79-years-old will write and direct his first TV series for the streaming service.
NewsWoody Allen is doing a TV show at the age of 79? Well there’s a first time for everything.
The prolific filmmaker behind such classics as Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Midnight in Paris is taking his first plunge into television since 1967. Well that is if Amazon Studios counts as television.
Having secured its first Golden Globe this past Sunday with Transparent, Amazon is ready to announce itself as a force to be reckoned with, as well as a serious competitor to Netflix. The streaming content provider announced a major deal Tuesday to produce an Untitled Woody Allen Project that the comedian auteur will write and direct. Set to be a half-hour series, it is a curiosity what the series will be about—other than probably romance in New York—and if it might skew toward to the surreal or simply the neurotic.
“Woody Allen is a visionary creator who has made some of the greatest films of all-time, and it’s an honor to be working with him on his first television series,” said Roy Price, vice president of Amazon Studios. “From Annie Hall to Blue Jasmine, Woody has been at the creative forefront of American cinema, and we couldn’t be more excited to premiere his first TV series exclusively on Prime Instant Video next year.”
Of course that proclamation is a bit tenuous. This will be the first series created and ran by Allen, however the comedian previously wrote several TV movies and worked on several variety shows throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including as late as 1967’s TV movie, The World: Color It Happy. Allen also famously worked alongside Mel Brooks as a writer on The Sid Caesar Show in 1958. Nevertheless, this will be Allen’s first series (albeit he did create an unaired pilot in 1962 called The Laughmakers).
This is also a curious delineation for Allen who has famously insisted that he will continue his crusade of making a new film every year until death or apathy takes hold of him (probably in that order). Of course, the funnyman has been trying new avenues as of late, including writing the book for the recent Broadway musical adaptation of his film, Bullets Over Broadway, although that was less than successful.
You can read our review of Allen’s most recent film, Magic in the Moonlight with Emma Stone and Colin Firth, by clicking here.
