Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg on ‘Diabolical’s’ Adorably Gory Looney Tunes Tribute, More ‘The Boys’ Spinoffs

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterA “feel-good” medical procedural from Michael Strahan, Constance Schwartz-Morini and “The Resident” executive producer Marc Halsey is in development at ABC, Variety has learned.Titled “The Front Line,” the potential series is centered around Sebastian “Bass” Clark, a professional athlete-turned-doctor who left the front line of the football field to start over on the front lines of healthcare as a medical resident — a transition that a handful of real-life NFL players have actually made. The project follows Bass and an ensemble of doctors and staff at a prestigious Pittsburgh hospital as they navigate high-stakes medical cases with all the adrenaline, warmth and big-heartedness of a great sports movie.

EXCLUSIVE: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina alum Chance Perdomo is set as a lead in Prime Video’s college-set spinoff of The Boys. He will play a young superhero alongside previously announced Jaz Sinclair, Lizze Broadway, Reina Hardesty and Maddie Phillips.

Seth Rogen has got his mom on his side.

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 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.

Seth Rogen is talking all things .ET's Lauren Zima spoke with Rogen at the show's finale screening Tuesday, where he talked about his role in the buzzed-about series and how he feels about Pamela Anderson telling her side of the story in her own Netflix documentary.«I'm excited to watch it. Yeah, I can't wait,» Rogen, who plays Rand Gauthier, a disgruntled former employee of the star couple, said of Anderson's upcoming doc.«The film, which has been in the making for several years, will feature the pop culture icon setting the record straight as she looks back on her professional path and her personal journey,» reads the statement from the streaming service. The doc is directed by Ryan White (, ), and promises to be «an intimate portrait» of Anderson's life.Pamela Anderson is ready to tell her story in a new documentary.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched “One Plus One Equals Two,” the finale of the first season of “The Boys Presents: Diabolical.”Amazon’s animated anthology “The Boys Presents: Diabolical” launched Friday, just under two months out for the third season premiere of its parent series, “The Boys.” While the majority of the bite-size shorts that make up the adult cartoon’s first season serve mainly as “a bloody amuse-bouche for Season 3” of the OG show, per “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke, there are pieces of the third-season plot that will be served up straight from the delicious chaos in “Diabolical.”First, there’s the finale episode, titled “One Plus One Equals Two,” written by “Diabolical” showrunner Simon Racioppa, which centers on Homelander’s (played by Antony Starr on “The Boys,” and voiced by him in this animated episode) introduction into the Supes of the Seven and the bond he forged with Black Noir (played by Nathan Mitchell on “The Boys” but voiced by no one in this because he’s always silent) out of working together to cover up a mostly accidental massacre on Homelander’s part. (Starr was arrested for alleged assault after these interviews were conducted.) “The finale is canon, yeah,” Kripke told Variety.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterTurning a comic book into a live-action TV series is not a revolutionary idea in the current TV landscape — but turning a comic book into a live-action TV series that is then itself turned into an animated series set in the same universe is not a pitch studio and network execs get every day.That’s what “The Boys” executive producers Seth Rogen, Eric Kripke and Evan Goldberg set out to do when they came up with the idea for the very adult cartoon shorts “The Boys Presents: Diabolical,” while they were simultaneously working on the upcoming third season of the mothership Amazon Prime Video series and its recently ordered untitled superhero-college spinoff.“We were deep in the pandemic and we were looking to get something from what we’re calling the VCU on the air go before Season 3,” “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke told Variety, citing the show’s Vought Cinematic Universe. “And with all the shooting restrictions, it was just impossible to even do a small live-action thing.

Jordan Moreau Amazon’s Prime Video has quickly become the go-to spot for R-rated animated shows, such as “Invincible” and “The Legend of Vox Machina” — and “The Boys Presents: Diabolical,” a spinoff of the mature superhero parody series “The Boys,” is a welcome addition to that bloody, irreverent family.“Diabolical” is an animated anthology series with a heroic cast of A-list voice actors and writers. At just 12 to 14 minutes long, the episodes are short and sweet, and there are a few gems that stand out among the crowd.

Does anyone remember “The Animatrix?” Released in 2003, it is an anthology film of nine animated shorts that expanded the universe of the Wachowskis’ “The Matrix” with new characters, varying styles, and unique visions. Almost two decades later, something similar has been produced for Prime Video’s smash hit “The Boys,” Eric Kripke’s critically acclaimed adaptation of the graphic novels by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson.

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 WriterFox’s animation house Bento Box Entertainment has signed a development deal with former TruTV executives Chris Linn and Marissa Ronca, and their consulting firm Contrast Media.Under the pact, Linn and Ronca will work closely with Bento Box’s development department, advising on creative strategy, packaging and development of animated projects for Fox Entertainment and ad-supported streaming service Tubi, as well as third-party platforms.Additionally, the WarnerMedia alums — Linn the former president of TruTV and Ronca the cable network’s former executive vice president and head of original programming and development — “will offer support” regarding Bento Box’s NFT studio, Blockchain Creative Labs. “Chris and Marissa are fantastic executives whose work we’ve admired for quite some time,” Scott Greenberg, co-founder and CEO of Bento Box Entertainment, said.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterWith Peak TV still getting peak-ier, it’s harder than ever for a series to really break through with audiences. And that means it’s even harder for a new writer to get their project noticed with the studio executives who are sifting through pitches looking for the next show that will break through with audiences.During a “Meet the Executives” virtual panel at SCAD TVfest last Thursday, five top programming execs offered up some key advice to SCAD students on what they are looking for in a script from the next generation of TV series creators.The panel, which was hosted by Variety‘s TV business writer Jennifer Maas, included JoAnn Alfano, executive vice president of scripted current series and head of international business development at Universal Studio Group; Jasmine Russ, vice president of development and production at Fabel Entertainment; Max Kisbye, executive vice president of development and production at MGM/UA Television; Tana Nugent Jamieson, senior vice president of creative affairs at A+E Studios; and Naomi Funabashi, senior vice president of film and television at Hillman Grad Productions.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Red vs. Blue,” Monday’s episode of “9-1-1: Lone Star.”Lisa Edelstein is exiting “9-1-1: Lone Star” after playing Gwyneth Morgan, the wife of Rob Lowe’s Chief Owen Strand and the mother of Ronen Rubinstein’s T.K. Strand, for two seasons on the Fox drama, Variety has learned exclusively.Edelstein’s departure was hinted at in the final moments of Monday’s episode of “Lone Star,” when T.K.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Good News About Hell” and “Half Loop,” the first two episodes of “Severance,” which premiered Friday on Apple TV Plus.The Ben Stiller-directed “Severance” debuted its first two episodes Friday, revealing a fictional world where people, like Adam Scott’s Mark Scout, are able to undergo a procedure that allows them to mentally separate their work and home lives. Why a person would choose to do this and why Lumon, the company that created the process, would require it of some of its employees is just the start of the questions posed by the initial pair of “Severance” episodes.“What we know of them is that they are a med-tech company.

The world of “The Boys” is expanding.

The Boys universe gets eight distinct new looks in the latest glimpse at Prime Video’s spinoff animated series The Boys Presents: Diabolical.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterAmazon Prime Video’s “The Boys” is finally giving fans of its Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson-created comic book source material what they have always wanted: Simon Pegg playing Hughie Campbell. The gift to “Boys” fandom was delivered Wednesday via the trailer for “The Boys: Diabolical,” Prime Video’s animated anthology series set in the universe of the live-action show.In the trailer for the eight-episode “Diabolical,” the different characters and animation styles for each of the the fun-size episodes, running 12-14 minutes, are revealed.