If anyone deserves a comeback, it’s directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. For one thing, it’s not clear if they even did anything wrong: After a string of hits — Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie, 21 and 22 Jump Street — the dynamic duo wound up with the job of bringing a Han Solo spin-off movie to theaters. They wound up leaving it mid-shoot and were replaced by Ron Howard, who “saved” the movie by creating the lowest grossing Star Wars movie in history. Last year, Lord and Miller announced their rebound movie. And now they’re developing a workplace comedy for NBC.
Variety is reporting that the two are hard at work on Business as Usual, an NBC show centered on low-level employees at a business in disarray. Think of it as the anti-The Office, where the workers aren’t 24-7 bored but 24-7 stressed, freaking out over constant management and workload changes, worried their positions may come to an end. The single-camera show will be written by Hayes Davenport, who’s produced and/or written for Great News, Vice Principals and Eastbound & Down.
As for Lord and Miller’s next film, it’s an adaptation of Artemis, by The Martian author Andy Weir, and it actually sounds a bit like Business as Usual, as well as The LEGO Movie. It focuses on a young woman trapped in a dead-end job on the moon, meaning it’s another Lord and Miller project about an everyperson trapped by forces outside his or her control.
(Via Variety)
