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The sequel series to “A Different World” is moving forward at Netflix, with the streamer giving out one of the only pilot orders in its history for the comedy project.

According to sources, the plan is shoot the pilot at the beginning of the summer to get a better sense of the show’s tone and of the chemistry among the ensemble cast. No cast members have been locked in at the time of this publishing.

An individual with knowledge of the situation says that Netflix does not plan to engage in a traditional pilot season like the broadcast networks, in which shows are competing for a limited number of slots.

Reps for Netflix declined to comment.

Netflix has eschewed a traditional pilot process for most of its history, only announcing their first ever pilot order in 2023. The streamer has instead focused on straight-to-series orders or script-to-series deals for their shows.

From the Series Mania conference in Lille, France, Ampere Analysis’ Guy Bisson and Cyrine Amor took to the stage Tuesday, armed with data, insights and a keen understanding of the seismic shifts in television production and commissioning.

The duo painted a picture of an industry in transition as it adjusts to the end of Peak TV, the realities of cost-cutting and the evolving preferences of global audiences.

75% Peak TV: A Market in Correction

“We are at 75% Peak TV,” Bisson declared, setting the tone for his presentation. “After this roller-coaster ride, certain types of content are falling out of favor.” He pointed to a 25% decline in first-run scripted series orders from their peak, emphasizing that this downturn was not necessarily a crisis but rather an adjustment.

High-budget sci-fi and fantasy productions are among the most significant casualties of this shift. “Some of the more expensive sci-fi fantasy series are getting canceled...

We are blessed by Canadian comedy royalty this week on the Pilot TV Podcast as Seth Rogen and Catherine O’Hara, stars of The Studio on Apple TV+, join us on the show to talk all about their audacious new satirical swipe at Hollywood and its movers and shakers with our very own Jordan King. Then, back in the podbooth, James Dyer, Boyd Hilton, and Kay Ribeiro convene to discuss the finer points of tree surgery, relitigate the greatness of Andor, and hypothetically dole out Nobel Prizes to TV creators.

Plus! The gang dive into this week's news, including the announcement of Ted Lasso Season 4, some juicy new Doctor Who Season 2 casting, and the cancellation of Netflix's The Sex Lives Of College Girls; and they cast a critical eye over Mythic Quest anthology spin-off Side Quest on Apple TV+, Liverpudlian crime drama This City Is Ours with Sean Bean on...

Fremantle is readying to unleash ‘Sandokan’ onto industry insiders during next week’s London TV Screenings.

“It’s simply a great epic adventure, based on a known IP. It’s ‘Poldark’ meets ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’,” enthuses CEO Commercial and International Jens Richter, promising action, adventure and some good old-fashioned pirating.

Starring Can Yaman (“Daydreamer”), Ed Westwick (“Gossip Girl”) and John Hannah (“Spartacus: Blood and Sand”), it’s based on the series of novels by Emilio Salgari and produced by Fremantle’s Italian content powerhouse Lux Vide. Set in the mid-1800s, it heads to a place inhabited by native Dayak tribes yet dominated by British law. Sandokan is used to fighting for his survival, but one thing catches him by surprise: love.

“There’s a portion of romance,” admits Richter. With each episode set in a different environment, “Sandokan” will “fit the needs of the market perfectly,” he adds.

The 2025 Writers Guild Awards took place Saturday night, with the guild continuing its tradition of doling out prizes in simultaneous ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles.

In the film categories, Anora ultimately took home the award for original screenplay, beating out A Real Pain, Challengers, Civil War and My Old Ass. As for adapted screenplay, Nickel Boys won, beating A Complete Unknown, Dune: Part Two, Hit Man and Wicked.

On the TV side, Shogun won for drama series while Hacks scored the award for comedy series. Shogun‘s “Anjin” also won for episodic drama, and Hacks‘ “Bulletproof” won for episodic comedy. Shogun also captured the award for best new series, while The Penguin won for limited series and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver won for comedy/variety series — talk or sketch.

Joel Kim Booster, who hosted the Los Angeles ceremony, kicked off the L.A. show, telling the crowd at the Beverly Hilton,...

Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been a ho-hum attempt at restarting a once-hot franchise.

I will be honest: The series adaptation would have probably been far more enjoyable without the Lord of the Rings name.

In many respects, it’s a run-of-the-mill fantasy drama.

(Prime Video/Screenshot)

Consequently, it isn’t easy to believe that many characters are the same people we met in the movies and the novels.

When the series was not renewed before the Season 2 finale, I figured Prime Video was considering nixing its plan to produce five seasons.

(Amazon Studios)

Sometimes lucrative deals don’t translate into many viewers, and the series had a splashy start before faltering as it progressed.

Prime Video confirmed on Thursday that Season 3 was officially in the works, but it makes me wonder whether there will be some budget cuts to account for the fewer than expected viewership.

This week on the Pilot TV Podcast we've another trifecta of top notch telly offerings to dive into and review. Among the brilliant British shows we're covering on the latest episode of the pod are Chris Lang’s Unforgotten, which reunites Sanjeev Bhaskar's Di Sunny with his famous backpack as it enters its sixth series on ITV; then, over on Channel 4 Jack Rooke’s Big Boys gets a last hurrah as its third and final series finally reaches our screens; and finally, for the TV license fee payers among us, Lucy Punch starring Motherland spinoff Amandaland falls under our watchful eye as it makes its debut on BBC1 .

Elsewhere on this week's show, James Dyer, Boyd Hilton, and Kay Ribeiro start as they mean to go on — by getting sidetracked with pick'n'mix open bar discussions and The Traitors finale chat, the latter of which incurs the return of...

The new normal for Hollywood production is beginning to take shape, and it’s posing challenges for advocates eager to attract more production to the L.A. area.

That’s one takeaway from a new report from production tracking service ProdPro that scrutinizes the state of filming in 2024 and surveys crew members, executives and suppliers on the outlook for 2025. The number of productions increased 18 percent last year and spend on those projects ramped up by $16.2 billion in comparison with 2023, when simultaneous writers’ and actors’ strikes shut down much of the business, according to the “2025 TV & Film Outlook” report, released Jan. 30. Still, that uptick “fell short of expectations” and 2022 levels of production by 11 percent.

ProdPro’s report hardly covers all of the vast production landscape — its analysis takes into account live-action, scripted productions commissioned by major U.S.-based companies with estimated budgets of over $1 million — but it does offer a...

Amidst an ongoing decline in film production in the United States, a survey of film executives conducted by ProdPro revealed that top American production states like California, Georgia and New York did not rank among the Top 5 most preferred locations for studios to shoot.

ProdPro, a film production analytics company, released a new report Thursday with its outlook on physical production for 2025. Among more than 150 studio executives surveyed, the Top 5 production hubs that were named as most preferred to shoot in were, in order: Toronto, the United Kingdom, Vancouver, Central Europe and Australia. California came in sixth, followed by Georgia and New Jersey.

More than 500 crew members from around the world were also asked about their optimism for the industry in the year ahead. Overall, the sentiment was pessimistic with a net negative rating of -23%, with the only production hub with 50% of crew members expressing optimism being Australia. But that far exceeds California,...

After earning acclaim with Succession, writer Jesse Armstrong is tackling the 2008 financial crisis in a movie for HBO.

Did ‘Peak TV’ happen? As fewer shows are commissioned and budgets shrink, there are those that claim we’re now on the downward slopes of an experience that has lasted a couple of decades. Of course, it’s debatable as to whether we really have exited the golden age of TV era as some suggest, as we’ll only really be able to answer that definitively with the benefit of hindsight.

If that does prove to be the case, though, it’s beyond doubt that the last great television series of Peak TV was Succession, (pictured) the HBO drama about the squabbling family of an ageing media magnate. Jesse Armstrong, creator of the immortal British sitcom Peep Show, was the creative force behind Succession, and his unique palette of wit, sharp dialogue,...

The glorious Christmas binge is over, our Best TV Shows Of 2024 have been revealed, our Review Of The Year special episode is out in the wild, and now the Pilot TV Podcast is back back back in your ears and ready to guide you through another year of peak TV! To kick things off in this, our first show of 2025, we have a brace of banging guests as James Norton and Niamh Algar talk to our very own Kay Ribeiro about playing parents who find out their kids were swapped at birth in ITV drama Playing Nice [27:56 — 42:10 approx.]

Back in the podbooth, James Dyer, Boyd Hilton, and Kay reconvene after the festive break for a doozy of an episode in which our first listener question of 2025 has the team talking about the multifaceted, complex world of producers, executive producers, co-producers, and all sorts of producers. Then, over on the news front,...

From Jon Hamm to Elisabeth Moss, the Mad Men characters are played by immensely talented actors playing deeply complex characters. Almost every major character is involved in extramarital affairs, amoral backroom dealings, and the relentless spread of secondhand smoke. Focusing on the unscrupulous executives of a New York advertising firm in the 1960s, Mad Men is subversively action-free. Whereas shows like The Sopranos relied on mob murders to keep the audience invested, Mad Men had to grip viewers with its characters and their interpersonal conflicts alone.

Throughout seven critically acclaimed seasons, the cast of Mad Men collectively won two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. Many of Mad Men’s cast members received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for their performances, and some of them even took home trophies. The writers created a company full of rich, three-dimensional human beings, and the cast brought them to life.

Quick Links The Evolution of Television Brought a Steady Increase in Quality Programming No One Believed a Prestige TV Drama Could Work on Broadcast Lost Accidentally Proved Peak TV-Style Shows Could Work on Broadcast The Business of Making Television Changed Because of Lost's Success

Looking at the history of modern television, the success of Lost on ABC, a broadcast network, was an important milestone in reaching the era of "Peak TV." Some point to The Sopranos as the moment when televised drama began to match the prestige of cinema. However, it wasn't just one series that improved the overall quality of programming on the small screen, but a steady progression of shows culminating with Lost. Shows like The Sopranos and Lost debuted before on-demand and digital video recorders were in widespread use. What happened each week to Tony, his family or the gang on the island captured the zeitgeist beyond their debut dates.

When it came time to pick the best new television shows of the year, we had a lot of options. Hollywood may have pumped the breaks from peak Peak TV (plus a post-strike slowdown), but there were still so many shows that premiered in 2024 — far more than any one person could ever hope to consume at all, let alone in a timely fashion.

That’s where we come in. This list of the below 15 programs are meant to highlight the best of the new swings this year. There was, finally, a good rom-com on television with Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This,” featuring the lovely charm of Adam Brody at the height of his powers. FX productions on Hulu continued to be a powerhouse, from the Emmy-dominating “Shogun” in the spring to just-dropped-two-weeks-ago “Say Nothing,” which tells the true story of the Troubles in Ireland and will stick with you long past the final credits.

A quartet of brilliant guests await on this week's star-studded episode of the Pilot TV Podcast. First up, we sent Helen O'Hara to sit down with Billy Bob Thornton and Ali Larter for a good old chinwag about Taylor Sheridan’s new show, Landman, which has just had its two-episode premiere on Paramount+ [18:01 — 29:12 approx]. Then, for a double helping of O'Hara, we sent Helen O'Hara off once more, this time to get the skinny on Sky's new Dune: Prophecy series from Bene Gesserit sisters Olivia Williams and Emily Watson, who share the secrets of their off- and on-screen bond, as well as anecdotes involving the National Portrait Gallery, a Dune-obsessed WiFi installation guy, and a young Mark Strong [47:09 — 1:01:06 approx].

Either side of those interviews, back in the podbooth this week's listener not-really-a-question-but-more-of-a-comment invites James Dyer, Boyd Hilton, and Kay Ribeiro to check out Sky's Chimp Crazy, the latest doc from the team behind Tiger King.

This week's episode of the Pilot TV Podcast is a real diamond — or, to be more accurate, a real Crystal. That's right folks, legendary funnyman Billy Crystal is on the show chatting to our resident comedy expert James Dyer about Apple TV+ supernatural mystery series Before, which is... well, not a comedy. But they do chat about Friends, the evolution of sitcoms, and much more in an expansive chat [1:02:20 — approx]. And as if that weren't treat enough, we also have another couple of gems with us on the pod this week in the shape of Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch, the stars of Sky's new adaptation of the Frederick Forsyth's 1971 'analogue spycraft' classic novel The Day Of The Jackal. They sat down with our very own international man of mystery Boyd Hilton to discuss the show, assassins' work-life balance, six packs, and, er, Strictly Come Dancing [21:00 — 35:12 approx].

Elsewhere, back in the podbooth James,...

All entertainment production in the Greater Los Angeles area fell 5% year-on-year according as the third quarter delivered 5,048 shoot days in the weakest quarter of 2024 so far.

Feature film production climbed to 476 shooting days, up 26.6% on the year-ago period, when the Hollywood dual strikes were drastically slowing down production. The third quarter number dropped against 704 for the second quarter and 634 for the first quarter.

Scripted television producers logged 758 shoot days across TV drama, TV comedy, and TV pilot categories tracked by FilmLA, which is the partner film office for the City and County of Los Angeles and other local jurisdictions.

Current...

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the Oscar- winning wife and husband filmmaking team behind Free Solo, are set to make a film about the ill-fated 1924 ascent of Mount Everest by British climbers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, with the question still unresolved of whether they reached the summit.

The film has been inspired by a National Geographic expedition to the Himalayas led by Chin that last month discovered Irvine’s boot, sock and severed foot on a glacier beneath Everest. This follows on from the discovery of Mallory’s remains in 1999.

The chance discovery of Irvine’s boot is...

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the Oscar- winning wife and husband filmmaking team behind Free Solo, are set to make a film about the ill-fated 1924 ascent of Mount Everest by British climbers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, with the question still unresolved of whether they reached the summit.

The film has been inspired by a National Geographic expedition to the Himalayas led by Chin that last month discovered Irvine’s boot, sock and severed foot on a glacier beneath Everest. This follows on from the discovery of Mallory’s remains in 1999

The chance discovery of Irvine’s boot is...

Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the Oscar- winning wife and husband filmmaking team behind Free Solo, are set to make a film about the ill-fated 1924 ascent of Mount Everest by British climbers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, with the question still unresolved of whether they reached the summit.

The film has been inspired by a National Geographic expedition to the Himalayas led by Chin that last month discovered Irvine’s boot, sock and severed foot on a glacier beneath Everest. This follows on from the discovery of Mallory’s remains in 1999

The chance discovery of Irvine’s boot is expected...

What may have started as a joke in season two and evolved into a hashtag campaign by fans is now coming to fruition.

More than seven years after the former NBC comedy wrapped its run with its sixth and final season on Yahoo, cult favorite comedy Community is officially getting its long-awaited movie. Peacock, NBC’s streaming counterpart, has greenlit the untitled Community movie after landing the project from series creator Dan Harmon following a bidding war with other platforms.

Six of Community’s nine central stars will return for the movie: Joel McHale (Jeff), Danny Pudi (Abed), Alison Brie (Annie), Gillian Jacobs (Britta), Jim Rash (Craig) and Ken Jeong (Ben). Donald Glover (Troy), Chevy Chase (Pierce) and Yvette Nicole Brown (Shirley) are not currently attached to the movie. Reps for Peacock declined comment on their status and if any negotiations were expected to transpire to reunite all nine original stars.

Summer has officially begun, but there is no small-screen rest as the networks, cablers and streaming service are rolling out new and returning series. This week alone sees the rebirth of The Gong Show on ABC tonight, the launch of the great Glow on Netflix tomorrow, and Power back Sunday for its fourth season.

Still, as Emmy voting continues, we ponder on this week’s TV Talk podcast: Is there too much TV out there? As we try to be of public service despite sounding like grumpy old men sometimes, we suggest strategies for finding the best of the best in this era of Peak TV. We also play some of Pete’s insightful interview with Oscar winner and Big Little Lies star/producer Nicole Kidman from his The Actor’s Side series. (You can actually watch the whole interview here.)

We also dive in the Emmy pool and take...