The Russell Peters Show

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Russell Peters + Internet = Sitcom Deal

SANJAY SHAH, Feb 03, 2006

If you haven’t heard of Canadian comedian Russell Peters, or seen the legendary 45-minute internet clip that made him famous in the United States, then you just might be the type of person who still watches movies on VHS.

When you finally pick up an iPod Video five years from now, perhaps then you’ll be able to download the pilot episode of a sitcom starring Russell Peters. But if you wait until then, you will be watching a pilot that is already five years old.

That is because Peters has just inked a deal with Hollywood heavyweight Tom Werner to create a sitcom at Warner Brothers Television based upon Peters’s comedy act. Peters will also star.

Tom Werner’s name should look familiar. Most television viewers recognize it accompanying the title Executive Producer in the ending credits of two decades worth of tremendously popular sitcoms such as The Cosby Show, Roseanne, and That ’70s Show.

If Peters’s sitcom pilot is one of the lucky few that gets picked up by a major network or cable channel this spring (and there’s a good chance that it will), then you may find Peters in your home once a week. On the television, that is.

Indeed, there have been other attempts to produce an American sitcom with a desi protagonist. Hollywood paid attention to the wild popularity of BBC shows Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars of No. 42, which featured desis prominently, and wanted to duplicate the model here in the United States.

And so, in 2004, NBC made one of a handful of industry-wide attempts to peddle desis to the American public with its pilot Nearly Nirvana—a show initially starring Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar), written by Ajay Saghal (a screenwriter perhaps most famous for betrothing actress Kelli Williams), and produced by David Schwimmer (yes, that David Schwimmer).

Nearly Nirvana successfully navigated past many pitfalls notorious in the development process for network television shows, but ultimately failed to win a slot in the fall lineup. (Instead, we got Joey. Thanks, NBC!)

But Peters’s sitcom will likely enjoy a better fate. Tom Werner is a powerful Hollywood player. He has a reputation for producing successful, high-quality television franchises. And, most importantly, he’s got a star who has already proven his popularity in intimate standup clubs, enormous amphitheaters, and on screens of all sizes.

In addition to his live standup performances all over the world, including a rare 11-year run at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal—one of the largest international comedy festivals—Peters starred in two one-hour specials on The Canadian Comedy Channel: Russell Peters is off the Hook and The Russell Peters Show. This second show won him the Gemini Award, the Canadian equivalent of the Emmy Award, for best solo comedy show.

Peters hosted two seasons of the BBC talk show Late Night East in the United Kingdom, and was featured in the television series Police Academy. He has also appeared in Eddie Griffin’s My Baby’s Daddy (2004), and the upcoming independent film Quarter Life Crisis.

And, of course, he is most famous for a 45-minute video clip that was distributed all over the internet, inundating inboxes everywhere. Arguably, it was this clip that blazed him a path straight into Tom Werner’s office.

Source: http://indiacurrents.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=fdd3d5bb5a9f9fdc849de f12f4af39d0

good shit...more power to him..i hope it goes well