The pilot season of 2012 is heating up, with FOX jumping in the pool today to order 4 pilots - two comedies, and two dramas.
The network started off this afternoon with comedy project Ben Fox Is My Manny, from film writer Dana Fox. The single-camera comedy would focus on a single mom whose hapless younger brother moves in to help her take of her baby - the characters, in fact, being based on creator Fox and her younger brother, the titular Ben Fox. The pilot will be produced by 20th Century TV and Chernin Entertainment, and had a significant script commitment plus penalty in the development season.
Two hours later, two dramas were picked up in one fell swoop: legal drama Guilty from Brothers & Sisters and No Ordinary Family creator Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim, and an untitled project from The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle executive producer Kevin Williamson. Guilty centers around a morally questionable defense attorney, who, disbarred after being falsely convicted of fraud, begins solving cases he’s not allowed to take using unconventional ways, working slowly up to getting back at those who wronged him. The untitled Kevin Williamson drama, his first at a non-The CW/WB network in quite some time, revolves around a cult of serial kilers, and an FBI agent who gets caught in the middle of them through his investigations. Both scripts had received put pilot commitments, so neither pick-up comes particularly as a surprise.
Last of the day, though certainly not least, is a single-camera comedy from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia writer/actor Rob McElhenney and FX Prods., where McElhenney’s company RCG (with Sunny co-stars Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton) is set up under an overall deal. The pilot, entitled Living Loaded, is based on a book of the same name by Dan Dunn - both will center on a hard-partying, lazy blogger, forced to shift his trajectory when he becomes a radio host.
