Susan Booth
Staff Writer

Amazon has announced the five original TV series it will make this coming year, after getting some customer input on the new 14 pilot series. The series will begin to be shown via Amazon Prime Instant Video Service.

The political comedy entitled Alpha House, starring John Goodman and Betas, a sitcom about Silicon Valley are among those selected for a full series production.The children’s programs Annebots and Creative Galaxy and Tumbleaf will also be put into production as well. This is Amazon’s first venture into putting out their own line of programming, following closely behind Netflix and YouTube. The pilots for these new series have already been shown on Amazon Prime in the US, and aired on LoveFilm in the UK this past month. They also asked the customers to help decide which series should be made and which ones should not be made.

Alpha House has been written by the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and it stars John Goodman as one of four misfit senators who share a house. Garry Trudeau said, “We’re thrilled to have emerged safely from this harrowing exercise in online democracy.” The new series Betas is about four friends who are hoping to make it big and get rich in the Silicon Valley, with Ed Begley Jr. being cast in this new series. Both shows will shoot another ten episodes, with the series Alpha House airing this November.

Annebots, is a series about science and technology featuring robots. Creative Galaxy is an interactive art show. Tumbleaf is a pre-school series, and all these series will all get 26-episode runs.

Roy Rice, the director of Amazon Studios said, “We are thrilled at the enthusiastic customer response to our first original pilots. The success of this first set of pilots has given us the push to try this approach with even more shows. Zombieland was a pilot based on the film Zombieland, which ended up being a very unsuccessful project.” Simon Morris, the chief marketing director for LoveFilm, told BBC this past month that the series would be available to everyone, and not just those who subscribe to Amazon Prime.

Zombieland, a comedy series based on the 2009 film famous for the never ending search for Twinkies, and Browsers, a musical comedy starring Frasier‘s Bebe Neuwirth, was amongst those series that didn’t end up being picked up. It’s kind of a shame if you ask me; that could have been a wonderful series! Emmy-winning director Adam Bernstein, who directed the pilot for Amazon’s Alpha House, has been recruited to direct the first episode of FX series Fargo, which is based off of the 1996 film with Oscar-winner Frances MacDormand.

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