Fox Orders Holiday Event Series ‘A Moody Christmas’ Based on Australian Comedy
By Joe Otterson
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Fox is moving forward with its long-gestating American adaptation of the Australian comedy miniseries “A Moody Christmas” as a holiday event series, Variety has learned.
The single-cam comedy follows Dan Moody as he returns home to spend Christmas with his dysfunctional family. When he arrives, he’s met with the inevitable madness of a family whose members are all hiding things from each other.
Like the original, the series will run for six half-hour episodes. Bob Fisher, Rob Greenberg, and Tad Quill will write and executive produce the Fox version. Fisher and Greenberg recently co-wrote the remake of “Overboard,” with Greenberg also directing. Quill most recently created the series “Angel From Hell,” and his past credits include shows like “Scrubs” and “Spin City.”
Original series creators Trent O’Donnell and Phil Lloyd and executive producer Jason Burrows will executive produce the new version along with Eric Tannenbaum and Kim Tannembaum. Jason Wang of The Tannenbaum Company will co-executive produce. CBS Television Studios and Fox Entertainment will produce.
Fox originally put the series into development back in 2013 with a put pilot commitment, less than a year after the original series aired on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). The original was produced by Jungleboys, the production company of Burrows, Lloyd, and, and O’Donnell. The company, now known as Jungle Entertainment, currently has the shows “Mr. Inbetween” airing on FX and “No Activity” on CBS All Access, the latter of which being based on an Australian series created by O’Donnell.
This marks the latest event-type series that Fox has ordered in recent months. Most notably, the network has commissioned the six-episode series “BH90210” for this summer, which will see cast members of “Beverly Hills, 90210” reunite to play heightened versions of themselves staging a revival of the show. Fox has also ordered the nine-episode series “What Just Happened??!,” a spoof of aftershows that will be hosted by Fred Savage.