Hulu has announced that Steve Martin and Martin Short will star in a new comedy series. The show has been given a straight-to-series, headed by This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman and 20th Century Fox TV. The announcement that the famous movie actors will be on the small screen was during the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena, California.
The currently untitled comedy, co-created and written by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, a Grace and Frankie executive producer, will be following the story of three true crime obsessed strangers who find themselves in a true crime situation. Martin and Short, who are longtime collaborators and friends, are set to play two of the three strangers.
Deadline reported a rumor that the third main character will be a younger woman, with word of the project and this role causing a “frenzy” within the industry as many hope to work with Martin and Short.
Martin and Short recently finished a musical comedy tour together, which was a Netflix special in 2018 called Steve Martin and Martin Short: An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life.
While Short has appeared on television several times, this will be Martin’s first regular scripted TV series.
The show will be set in New York City, another important character in the comedic series. This will be the third series 20th TV collaborates with Hulu on. As Hulu is fully controlled by Disney, there has been an increasing effort to create more joint projects with Hulu and Disney’s TV production units, as reported by Deadline.
Dan Fogelman is under an overall deal with 20th Century Fox TV, where this is one of the projects he will be executive producing.
“When you’re lucky enough to have lunch with Steve Martin, and halfway through the meal he says ‘hey, I have an idea for a TV show’ – it’s a pretty good day. This is as exciting as it gets,” Fogelman told Deadline.