Marcel The Shell co-writer Nick Paley is creating Freaks And Geeks meets The Twilight Zone

The coming-of-age mystery series Phony is coming to Hulu

By Gabrielle Sanchez  |  September 1, 2022 | 2:28pm
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Marcel The Shell co-writer Nick Paley is creating Freaks And Geeks meets The Twilight Zone
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Marcel The Shell With Shoes On co-writer Nick Paley has another exciting project on the way, this time over at Hulu. After a six-way bidding war for the previously scrapped ABC Signature project, titled Phony, Paley landed a script-to-series deal with the streamer.

Per Deadline, Phony is described as a fusion of Judd Apatow’s Freaks And Geeks and The Twilight Zone. The half-hour coming-of-age mystery series follows Sonny, “a popular high school kid who wakes up after a strange car accident and discovers his mom has been replaced by an impostor,” which sounds like a plot straight out of a filler episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Paley made his feature writing debut with Marcel The Shell, which he co-wrote with Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate. The A24 flick is based on the early 2010s Youtube series following the sweet, comedic, and tiny life of a red-shoed mollusk (voiced by Slate).

On his writing for Marcel The Shell, we wrote:

“Sentiment is a prized commodity for a picture such as this, where laughter and poignancy frequently co-mingle. Camp, Slate and co-screenwriter Nick Paley (working from a story by Camp, Slate, Paley and Elisabeth Holm) layer in tenderness along with highly comedic scenarios and dialogue minus any sense of desperate, cloying, or treacly twee—a true feat for a film that runs high on sweetness and charm.”

Paley will executive produce the Phony alongside Drew Goddard (The Martian, Daredevil, The Good Place), Charlie Alderman, and Sarah Esberg. Prior to his work on Marcel The Shell, Paley served as a director and editor on Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer’s Broad City, as well as Inside Amy Schumer.

No casting announcements have been made just yet for Phony.

 
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