The great migration of filmmakers to television has now been joined by the wooly Jon Favreau, ever the pack animal, who’s making his way back onto the small screen with two different projects in development at two different broadcast networks. Yesterday it was reported that Favreau had sold the spec comedy script Tweaked to CBS, which concerns single parents learning to date again in Santa Monica, and somehow has nothing to do with amphetamines. Seriously, why? And then today it was announced that Favreau would also make a return to ABC (where he last directed the short-lived In Case Of Emergency) as an executive producer and probable director on the ABC sci-fi dramedy Ex-Comm, a “presidential procedural” about a newly elected president and the top-secret “executive committee” that helps him investigate and contend with various “conspiracy theory truths.” (Basically, The West Wing’s Fringe Warehouse 13 Files.)
The latter project also hails from Favreau’s Cowboys And Aliens team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci—who are, importantly, also the minds behind Fringe—who are producing the script from Superman Returns screenwriter Michael Dougherty and Robot Chicken’s Seth Green. And with the addition of Favreau, some might call this a “genre dream team,” if they were given to making such statements—which we aren’t—and if they were willing to overlook the fact that Cowboys And Aliens and Superman Returns weren’t exactly “dreams.” Nevertheless, the concept is certainly ambitious, and it promises to be “tonally fun but grounded,” which is exactly the sort of fun one would demand from a “presidential procedural.” Anyway, both Tweaked and Ex-Comm are expected to receive pilot orders from their respective networks, meaning the Favreau will soon become a familiar sight lumbering across the television landscape, its bellowing call once more attracting great herds of other sensitive yet sarcastic man-children.