Since the CW entered the female-centered hourlong comedy/dramedy arena with Jane The Virgin, all of its shows in the genre have come from CBS TV Studios: Jane, My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and the upcoming No Tomorrow. Now the CW’s other studio partner, Warner Bros TV, which is behind the network’s highly rated DC dramas, is entering the space in a big way with a project from one of the top comedy producers on its talent roster, Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence.
The CW has put in development Life Sentence, from WBTV and Lawrence’s studio-based Doozer Prods. Written by Significant Mother creators Erin Cardillo and Richard Keith, Life Sentence centers on a young woman diagnosed with terminal cancer. When she finds out that she’s not dying after all, she has to learn to live with the choices she made when she decided to “live like she was dying.”
Cardillo and Keith executive produce with Doozer’s Lawrence and Jeff Ingold.
The CW
Doozer has a pilot production commitment from NBC for a space comedy written by Undateable creator Adam Sztykiel, The company also has a script plus penalty commitment at NBC for There Goes The Neighborhood, a Cleveland-set comedy executive produced by LeBron James. The company is repped by ICM Partners.
Cardillo and Keith both started as actors. They got a break as writers when a half-hour comedy spec script of theirs won the New York Television Festival and got them a development deal at Fox and put them on CW Seed’s radar for a web series they had developed at Alloy. It ultimately became a summer TV series for the CW, Significant Mother. Cardillo and Keith had remained in business with the CW, selling romantic dramedy I Do Crew to the network in January through WBTV. They are repped by UTA, Cartel’s Evan Corday and Michael Shenkman at Bloom Hergott and James Feldman at Lichter Grossman, respectively.
