Fox’s Bento Box Sets Development Deal With TruTV Vets Chris Linn and Marissa Ronca

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Killing Eve” star Jodie Comer is set to star in drama series “Big Swiss” from producer Adam McKay, which is currently in the development stage at HBO.The project is based on Jen Beagin’s upcoming book of the same name and will be produced by A24 and McKay’s Hyperobject Industries.Here’s the description for “Big Swiss”: After starting a new life anonymously transcribing sex therapy sessions in Hudson, NY, a woman becomes fixated with one of the patients, leading to an obsessive, explosive relationship between the two.Deadline first reported the news.More to come…

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterABC Signature has signed a two-year overall deal with Tony McNamara, the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated writer who created Hulu’s “The Great” and penned films “The Favourite” and Disney’s “Cruella.”Under the pact, McNamara will develop and supervise projects for the Disney Television Studios-owned division.“Tony’s work on ‘The Great’ and ‘Cruella’ is sly, subversive and delicious, and we made it our mission to get this spectacular talent to our studio,” ABC Signature president Jonnie Davis said in a statement Wednesday. “Thankfully, he said ‘yes.’ We’re so excited to support him in whatever he wants to do next.”McNamara is the creator, showrunner, and executive producer of the Emmy-nominated series “The Great” on Hulu, starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, which is based on his stage play.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “The Guitar Man,” the March 15 episode of “This Is Us.”“This Is Us” kicked off its last-ever “Big 3 Trilogy” of episodes Tuesday, a fan-favorite seasonal event for the NBC drama that devotes three consecutive weeks of episodes to the personal stories of Kevin (Justin Hartley), Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown), respectively.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterWhen “9-1-1” Season 5 returns from hiatus Monday and reunites with its spinoff “9-1-1: Lone Star” in back-to-back time slots, leading lady Angela Bassett will be pulling double duty as her character Sergeant Athena Grant appears on the Fox first-responder drama and has a brief crossover appearance on “Lone Star.”“There’s a thing called SWAT-ing, where somebody calls 9-1-1, and they send the police or usually a SWAT team to a house,” showrunner Tim Minear tells Variety, teasing the episode. “It’s a malicious prank, and gamers do it to each other.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterFox hopes to greet a big audience with its new small-town docu-comedy “Welcome to Flatch” when the Paul Feig and Jenny Bicks-produced show launches later this week. But if “Flatch” doesn’t bring in the viewers with its linear premiere on Thursday at 9:30 p.m., Fox execs won’t be talking about cutting the mockumentary from the network’s midseason lineup Friday morning.That’s because the broadcast network is launching the first half of the 14-episode Season 1 via Hulu and other digital platforms at midnight on Thursday, and promises it’s not going to be giving much weight to “Welcome to Flatch’s” Live + Same Day Nielsen ratings over those first seven weeks of airing, when the episodes will all be available for streaming well before they rollout weekly on Fox.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“The Boys” Season 3 teaser trailer dropped Saturday, revealing an almost-two minute look at the upcoming season of the Amazon Prime Video series filled with lasers, blood, guts, glory and, apparently, dancing.In the video, which you can view below, Butcher (Karl Urban) is struggling with a mysterious case of glowing, light-beam-shooting eyeballs, while Homelander (Antony Starr) is unsuccessfully attempting to curb his rage, Hughie (Jack Quaid) is having a mental breakdown in his new supe-regulation government job, Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy has awoken, Annie a.k.a. Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is crying, and there’s something that has caused Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) to break out into an apparent big musical number, complete with backup dancers.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“The Baby-Sitters Club” has been canceled at Netflix after two seasons, Variety has learned.Based on the best-selling book series by Ann M. Martin, “The Baby-Sitters Club” is a contemporary dramedy that follows the friendship and adventures of seven friends as they start their own babysitting business in Stoneybrook, Connecticut.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterDiscovery investors voted in approval of the company’s $43 billion acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T to create Warner Bros. Discovery during a special meeting of stockholders Friday, marking one of the final formal steps before the transaction can close.The deal, a spinoff of WarnerMedia from AT&T, is expected to be completed early in Q2, with insiders telling Variety the estimated date is between April 11-28. The merger has already received approval from the U.S.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterWarnerMedia has been owned by telco giant AT&T for less than four years and it will soon have a new parent company — likely by the end of next month.Discovery’s shareholder vote on the acquisition of WarnerMedia is set for today during a special meeting of stockholders set for 10 a.m. ET. The deal is expected to get an easy thumbs-up given the approval already bestowed by Discovery’s oldest and most influential holders, investor John Malone and Advance/Newhouse Co.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterThe bargaining standoff between Major League Baseball and its players that led to last week’s cancellation of Opening Day is a particularly bitter pill to swallow for the local and national outlets that bring games to their most ardent fans — networks that already have experienced two seasons of COVID-driven disruptions.On March 1, MLB took the dramatic step of tabling Opening Day games and activities set for March 31. It also canceled other early games for the 2022 season. The cancellations affect programming and advertising plans for baseball TV partners including ESPN, Turner Sports, Fox Sports, Sinclair Broadcast Group and NBC Sports Regional Networks and team channels like the Yankees’ YES Network and the Dodgers’ Spectrum SportsNet LA.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterAmazon Prime Video is in talks to pickup a “God of War” live-action TV series adaptation from Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions, Variety has learned.No deal has closed yet for the project based on the popular Santa Monica Studio-produced PlayStation game. The potential series hails from “The Expanse” creators Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and “The Wheel of Time” showrunner Rafe Judkins.Per PlayStation’s officially description for “God of War,” “Staring with the release of ‘God of War’ in 2005 on PlayStation 2, Santa Monica Studio has created seven games across multiple platforms.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterTech-centric holding company Ballantyne Strong has launched Strong Studios to create content under the company’s Strong Entertainment division. David Ozer, formerly CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment’s Landmark Studio Group, will serve as president of the new studio.Based in New York, Strong Studios will develop and produce original feature films and television series, as well as acquire third party rights to content for global multiplatform distribution.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterThe Scott Foley-led drama “The Big Leap” has been canceled after just one season at Fox, Variety has learned.A modern tale about second chances, chasing your dreams and taking back what’s yours,”The Big Leap” revolves around a group of diverse, down-on-their-luck characters attempting to change their lives by participating in a potentially life-ruining reality dance show featuring a modern reimagining of “Swan Lake.”“The Big Leap” starred Scott Foley, Teri Polo, Piper Perabo, Simone Recasner, Kevin Daniels, Ser’Darius Blain, Jon Rudnitsky, Mallory Jansen and Anna Grace Barlow.The drama from creator/executive producer Liz Heldens (“The Passage,” “Friday Night Lights”), director/executive producer Jason Winer (“Modern Family,” “Perfect Harmony”) and executive producer Sue Naegle (“Soundtrack,” “The Plot Against America”) premiered as part of Fox’s fall lineup. It averaged a 0.4 rating among the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic and 2.8 million multiplatform viewers throughout its 11-episode run in Nielsen’s Live + Same Day data, which counts a week’s worth of delayed viewing where available.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched “Laser Baby’s Day Out,” the first episode of Amazon Prime Video’s “The Boys Presents: Diabolical.”Longtime buddies and producing partners Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have been “obsessed” with Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan for the past few years, and the idea of “doing something that had no words, no dialogue and purely physical humor.” Enter the offshoot of “The Boys,” which they executive produce, Amazon’s animated shorts anthology series, “The Boys Presents: Diabolical,” which launched Friday with all eight-episodes: the first being the Rogen and Goldberg-written “Laser Baby’s Day Out.”“We’d been messing around with some live-action movie ideas,” Goldberg told Variety. “And then when the idea to make the ‘Diabolical’ show came around, we were like, this is perfect.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSelwyn Seyfu Hinds has signed an overall deal with UCP, which will see him adapt the Civil War graphic novel series “The Sixth Gun” into a TV series for the Universal Studio Group-owned studio.Under the pact, Hinds will produce projects across various platforms through his production company Mad Massive Entertainment. First up is “The Sixth Gun,” based on the graphic novels from Oni Press by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt.Per UCP’s description for the potential show, “During the darkest days of the Civil War, vile men unearthed six pistols of otherworldly power.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched “Fairytale Wedding,” the Feb. 28 episode of NBC’s “The Endgame.”NBC’s new high-octane crime drama “The Endgame” aired its second episode Monday, revealing many more compelling details about its leading ladies — Morena Baccarin’s international arms dealer/crime boss Elena Federova and Ryan Michelle Bathé’s FBI agent Val Turner — than it did in its week-ago series premiere.In the episode, “Fairytale Wedding,” we saw the titular nuptials go up in flames when the church where Elena and her now-husband Sergey Vodianov (Costa Ronin) were to be wed was blown up with everyone they loved inside.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched “In the Unlikely Event of an Emergency,” the Feb. 28 episode of “9-1-1: Lone Star.”Gwyn Morgan (Lisa Edelstein) went as far as she could with her son, T.K. Strand (Ronen Rubinstein), on Monday’s “9-1-1: Lone Star” before leaving him to go the rest of the way on his own — both in the past and the present.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Euphoria” is now HBO’s second-most-watched show since 2004 behind only “Game of Thrones,” per the pay TV channel.The Zendaya-led drama hit yet another series high with its Season 2 finale episode Sunday, drawing 6.6 million viewers. According to HBO, “Euphoria” Season 2 episodes are now averaging 16.3 million viewers, the best performance for any season of an HBO series other than “Game of Thrones” since 2004.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Celebrity Book Club” podcast host and Apple’s “The Problem With Jon Stewart” head writer Chelsea Devantez has signed a multi-year overall deal at Disney’s 20th Television.Under the pact, Devantez will write and produce her own comedy projects for the studio, as well as supervise others.Devantez began her TV writing career on Stewart’s writing staff on his never-released and untitled HBO show. Her other TV credits include Tina Fey and Meredith Scardino’s Peacock comedy “Girls5Eva” and Liz Meriwether and Lake Bell’s ABC comedy “Bless This Mess.” Last year, Devantez sold her pilot, “This Is Our Year,” to 20th Television and CBS.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterAT&T and Discovery are expecting to close Discovery’s acquisition of WarnerMedia to create new company Warner Bros. Discovery as early as mid-April, Variety has learned.According to two people familiar with the matter, with Discovery’s shareholder vote on the deal — which has already received regulatory approval from the DOJ — set for March 11, the two companies are preparing for a close between April 11-April 28.