Variety has learned that New Girl creator and show runner, Elizabeth Meriwether, has signed a new deal through 20th Century Fox TV, once again. Her first being the deal she signed with the studio back in 2014 — just seven months after her recent multi-year extension agreement.
Meriwether’s deal will be the seventh that Twentieth Television has announced within the four weeks since the recent Disney acquisition of FOX’s entertainment properties. Deals made other writers and producers on the list include: Drew Goddard, Jason Winer, Octavia Spencer, Nora Smith, Jake Kasdan & Melvin Mar, and Marlene King.
“Peter Rice, Howard Kurtzman, Jonnie Davis, and Dana Walden have been my creative partners since I was a receptionist living in New York writing a script called ‘Sluts.’ I’m so grateful and thrilled to be able to keep making television at my home studio, which now, I’m hoping, also comes with tickets to Disneyland,” mentioned Meriwether in an official statement detailing her rise.
The quirky writer’s other studio projects include: ABC’s comedy Bless This Mess, featuring Lake Bell and Dax Shepard, ABC’s other green comedy Single Parents, and the upcoming ABC pilot for Woman Up, from Zoe Lister-Jones, which she will executive produce.
Chairman of Disney TV and ABC Entertainment, Dana Walden also released a statement:
Twelve years ago, when we first met, Liz was a wildly funny and talented playwright from New York, who was so dedicated to getting the characters and humor in her scripts exactly right, she’d often pull all nighters and sleep in her office. We’ve had the pleasure of watching her grow into a confident, formidable and successful show runner, who’s currently overseeing three shows, a slate of development and, thankfully, sleeping in her house. She’s outrageously funny, endlessly creative, wildly prolific and also one of the greatest people you’ll ever have the good fortune to know. Craig, Jonnie, Howard and I have made it our mission to keep her here and we’re so glad she said yes.