Fox aims to turn funny blog Texts From Last Night into an unfunny TV comedy series.
This sounds like a disaster in the making: User-contributed blog Texts From Last Night is being turned into a television show for Fox, reports Deadline. Silvio Horta, the creator of hit show Ugly Betty, is said to have been hired on to devlop the comedy series, which is being produced by Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison and Sony TV.
Believe it or not, this is actually the third attempt to create a show based on the notorious blog. The same group of producers, along with Fox, set out to make the show two seasons ago with writer Steve Holland, a co-producer of The Big Bang Theory, and former co-producer of Rules of Engagement, All That and The Nick Cannon Show. That attempt didn’t work out so well, for whatever reason.
Then, last season, they tried again with writers Marc Abrams and Michael Benson, each of whom wrote episodes of Entourage, and The Bernie Mac Show, among others. Once again, the show fell apart before reaching the air. This time around, Horta will take his turn with the pen.
If you didn’t already know (or couldn’t simply guess), Texts From Last Night posts funny, often embarrassing, often booze-fueled text messages, which are submitted by readers. It’s great, but there is literally nothing else to the blog. (Though creators Lauren Leto and Ben Bator did already turn the blog into a book, which isn’t nearly as much of a stretch as a TV show.)
Now, we can see how a single TV show episode might revolve around some regrettable text message. But an entire show? No way. It’s just not gonna happen. Even Sh*t My Dad Says, which was based on a Twitter feed, was a better idea than this – it had a built-in funny character, the foul-mouthed father. Guess what happened to that show – that’s right, it barely lasted a season before being pulled from the air. Why anyone would think this show has a better chance as a network series is beyond us.
So here’s a tip, show-makers: Things that are funny on the Internet are generally best left on the Internet. Let them be, and come up with your own ideas.
[Image via lanych/Shutterstock]
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