‘New Girl’ Creator Liz Meriwether in Overall Deal with 20th TV (EXCLUSIVE)
“New Girl” creator/exec producer Liz Meriwether will keep her adorkable adventures at 20th Century Fox TV under a multi-year overall deal with the studio.
Pact calls for Meriwether to develop new projects for the studio, though for the coming year she intends to keep her eye firmly on the Fox comedy that is heading into its third season in the fall.
The success of “New Girl” has turned Meriwether into one of the top comedy scribes on 20th TV’s formidable roster. She had limited TV experience before launching the single-camera laffer that stars Zooey Deschanel as the goofy, good-hearted (aka “adorkable”) Jess, who becomes roommates with three guys after catching her boyfriend in bed with another woman.
The show has drawn praise from critics for its deft mix of offbeat humor that captures the voice of contempo 20-somethings and laugh-out-loud moments, aided by Deschanel’s flair for physical comedy.
“New Girl,” from 20th TV and Chernin Entertainment, recently struck a lucrative syndication pact with Netflix. It’s also likely to be a draw for the studio in off-network sales to local TV stations because of its accessibility relative to other quirky single-cam comedies.
“We knew from our first meeting with Liz that she had an incredibly smart, entirely original comedic voice which felt fresh and timely and like nothing else on television,” said 20th Century Fox TV chairmen Gary Newman and Dana Walden. “ ‘New Girl’ is a fantastic show and a huge priority for the studio, and Liz’s dedication to making it great shows on every page of every script. She’s hilariously funny and as hard working as they come, and we feel like ‘New Girl’ is just the beginning of what she can do.”
Before “New Girl,” Meriwether fielded a comedy pilot for Fox and 20th TV (“Sluts”) in 2007 that didn’t get picked up but made her a scribe to watch. Her feature credits include the screenplay for the 2011 Natalie Portman-Ashton Kutcher rom-com “No Strings Attached.”
Meriwether is repped by WME and McKuin Frankel Whitehead.
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