AMC Ventures into Comedy, Orders Projects from John Leguizamo, Seth Rogen & More

Leading into the annual Upfront season AMC - the network and brand committed to delivering rich stories and characters that provide viewers something more - announces a robust development slate including numerous scripted drama projects, its first foray into scripted comedy, "overall" talent deals, and several new unscripted series.

The network's first scripted comedy project will be the greenlight of a pilot for "We Hate Paul Revere." Written, executive produced and starring Ethan Sandler and Adrian Wenner (the duo worked together on "My Boys," "Whitney"), "We Hate Paul Revere" tells the story of brothers Hugh and Ebenezer Moody and their struggle to find their place and the recognition they believe they deserve as they live in the shadow of history in Colonial Boston. "We Hate Paul Revere" is set to shoot in Q3'14 for consideration for 2015.

New creative relationships on drama and comedy projects include Chris Carter ("The X Files"), Amy Lippman ("Masters of Sex"), Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg ("This is the End"), and John Leguizamo ("Ice Age"), to name a few.

AMC also announced the renewal of the unscripted series "Comic Book Men" which, in its third season, is averaging one million viewers (live + same day) and more than 720,000 adults 18-49 at midnight on Sunday nights. Building on the late night success of "Comic Book Men," AMC is expanding its relationship with Kevin Smith to include the development of a late night project, "Hollywood Babble-On," starring Smith and his co-host of their wildly popular podcast, Ralph Garman, to be produced by Wilshire Studios ("The Soup," "Fashion Police") and executive produced by Kevin Smith, Ralph Garman and Gary Auerbach. Additionally, AMC is also working with Smith on the development of a docuseries featuring super-collector and "Comic Book Men" regular, Robert Bruce.Produced by Original Media, LLC and Smith's Smodcast Pictures, and executive produced by Dan Laikind, Charlie Corwin, Elyse Seiden and Kevin Smith, Bruce and his fellow experts scour the country searching real estate sales, auction houses and flea markets on a quest to find rare items that will feed the needs of his demanding clients and add to Bruce's own colossal collection.

AMC also announced an overall deal with Dave Erickson ("Sons of Anarchy"), who in addition has been engaged to co-write, along with Robert Kirkman, and serve as an Executive Producer on the unnamed "The Walking Dead" companion series.

"2013 was by all meaningful measures the most successful year in AMC's history and we are building on this momentum in every imaginable way. AMC is introducing more hours of original programming and the most robust, diverse development slate in our network's history. Unwavering is our commitment to the eclectic, quality dramatic series that have come to define our brand and to the unconventional unscripted worlds we love to explore. And today we also happily dive head-first into our first-ever scripted comedy pilot," said Charlie Collier, AMC president. "It is a personal point of pride for all of us to be working with a roster of such creative, talented and successful professionals, many of whom are entrusting us with personal passion projects. We appreciate their confidence and look forward to working collaboratively to bring their visions to fruition."

"We're very excited to continue our growth in original programming over the coming year. Along with some great new dramas, and our growing slate of unscripted series; we'll be expanding our brand of unexpected and unconventional original programming into scripted comedy. As always, we'll continue to look for unique creative voices to pair with passionate audiences through stories you'd never expect to see on television," said Joel Stillerman, AMC's executive Vice president of original programming, production and digital content. "We've got some terrific comedy projects in development, and are thrilled that we'll be making our first comedy pilot this year. In We Hate Paul Revere, we'll explore the characters that history forgot. For more than 200 years, Paul Revere has had a pretty good ride. It's about time someone took him down a peg!"