By Jake Coyle, Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Hulu is adding to its growing slate of original programming, including a new animated series from Seth Meyers that will translate his experiences on “Saturday Night Live” to a gang of superheroes.
Meyers previewed the show, “The Awesomes,” at Hulu’s upfront Thursday. He and co-creator Michael Shoemaker, a producer of “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and formerly of “SNL,” said the series will be a behind-the-scenes look at an “Avengers”-like troupe of crime-fighters.
Meyers said “The Awesomes” was based on backstage life at “SNL,” where he is a head writer and Weekend Update host.
The show is planned to debut next year on Hulu, which is co-owned by Disney, News Corp. and NBCUniversal.
Hulu is also producing a series about a group of friends who play pick-up basketball from “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” director Danny Leiner, “Are We There Yet?” writer Kenya Barris and “The Game” writer Hale Rothstein. That show, “We Got Next,” will premiere later this year.
Hulu is also planning a fantasy show called “Flow” built around the urban sport of parkour, which involves running, climbing, or leaping rapidly over obstacles, and a music talent discovery show called “Don’t Quit Your Daydream” that’s based on the 2010 documentary by Adrian Grenier and John Loar.
Those four series add to Hulu’s original programming that includes Morgan Spurlock’s “A Day in the Life” and the scripted series “Battleground.” The event Thursday was the first of a series of planned “newfronts” in which digital outlets present their programming to advertisers, much like the traditional TV upfronts in May.
Hulu said that in February, U.S. users watched 2.5 billion videos on the site. Earlier this week, it announced that will charge advertisers only if viewers watch a commercial in full.
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More