'Glee': Six Join Writing Staff for Season 3

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In the midst of its summer concert tour, Glee has added six to its writing staff for Season 3.

Allison Adler, Marti Noxon, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Michael Hitchcock, Matt Hodgson and Ross Maxwell will join Glee executive producers Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan in the writers’ room beginning Monday when work starts on Season 3.

Despite its ratings success and the intricacies involved in melding musical numbers into the show’s narrative, Glee has maintained a remarkably small writing staff. Murphy, Falchuk and Brennan have formed the core creative group, eschewing a traditional writers’ room.

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The plan originally was for Glee to introduce additional writers midway through the recently completed second season, but with a production-heavy schedule involving music supervision and choreography as well as planning the summer concert tour, Murphy, Falchuk and Brennan wound up writing all 22 episodes, with Murphy and Falchuk also directing several installments.

Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter in May that Season 3 will focus on new freshman characters and that he planned to include more serialized stories.

“Last year you had the baby story line that everyone could follow and this year we didn’t do that,” he told THR. “Next year we’re going to be doing that more. What I have learned from this season is I think people want story arcs.”

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Adler, whose credits include Chuck and No Ordinary Family, will serve as a co-executive producer.

Noxon, who first cut her teeth on Joss Whedon’s Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and whose credits include Mad Men and Shonda Rhimes’ Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, will be a consulting producer. Hitchcock, a former MADtv writer and actor whose credits include two episodes of Glee as well as several Christopher Guest features and 11 episodes on the final season of United States of Tara, also will be a consulting producer.

Aguirre-Sacasa, a comic book writer and playwright whose credits include Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and HBO’s Big Love, will be a co-producer.

Hodgson, a Glee script coordinator who worked with Murphy on the Julia Roberts feature Eat, Pray, Love, will be a staff writer, as will Running in Traffic actor Maxwell.

From 20th Television, principal photography on Season 3 of the Fox hit begins in August.

The Glee concert movie, Glee Live! 3D! bows in theaters Aug. 12.

Adler, Noxon and Aguirre-Sacasa are repped by WME; Hitchcock is with Gersh and Rain Management Group; Hodgson with CAA.

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