Amazon has signed Woody Allen to write and direct his first TV series.
Amazon has ordered a full season of the Untitled Woody Allen Project, a half-hour series written and directed by the veteran filmmaker. Episodes will be available next year on Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany.
The deal was announced less than two days after Amazon won its first Golden Globes, with its series Transparent taking home best comedy series and best actor in a comedy series (Jeffrey Tambor).
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“Woody Allen is a visionary creator who has made some of the greatest films of all time, and it’s an honor to be working with him on his first television series,” Amazon Studios vice president Roy Price said in a statement. “From Annie Hall to Blue Jasmine, Woody has been at the creative forefront of American cinema, and we couldn’t be more excited to premiere his first TV series exclusively on Prime Instant Video next year.”
Allen said: “I don’t know how I got into this. I have no ideas and I’m not sure where to begin. My guess is that Roy Price will regret this.”
Kevin Spacey previously told GQ that he’d sent Allen a note and gave him a Netflix subscription to watch his series House of Cards. But Allen ended up making a deal with Netflix’s rival streaming service.
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While Netflix has inked deals with a number of bold-faced names — including Chelsea Handler, Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Sandler — Amazon has made pacts with veteran filmmakers and TV producers such as Steven Soderbergh, Ridley Scott and Carlton Cuse, all of whom have created pilots for Amazon. Soderbergh’s coming-of-age comedy Red Oaks has been picked up to series.
Amazon traditionally allows its Prime Instant Video subscribers to watch pilots for potential series, voting on which ones they’d like to see become full series. Allen’s project, it seems, gets to bypass that audition process.
Allen is repped by ICM Partners.
