By Frazier Moore, Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Amazon Studios is delivering Woody Allen as creator of his first-ever TV series.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker will write and direct all of the episodes of the half-hour series. A full season has been ordered for Amazon's Prime Instant Video, the company announced Tuesday. The series is expected to premiere in 2016.
No details on casting were disclosed, nor was the series title announced.
Amazon Studios vice president Roy Price called Allen "a visionary creator who has made some of the greatest films of all time," keeping him "at the creative forefront of American cinema" during a career that spans 50 years.
"I don't know how I got into this," the 79-year-old Allen said in a wryly modest statement. "I have no ideas and I'm not sure where to begin. My guess is that Roy Price will regret this."
Allen's signing adds another coat of luster to Amazon Studios, a recent entrant in the world of streaming video that is redefining what "television" means. On Sunday, Amazon gained new cachet when the first season of its series "Transparent" won two Golden Globes, including best comedy series.
Allen has masterminded and often starred in more than 40 films since his maiden directorial effort, "What's Up Tiger Lily?" in 1966. His latest movie project is "Magic in the Moonlight," released last year, with yet another film in the pipeline for this year.
The late 1970s saw two of his most celebrated films, "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan."
He has won four Oscars and two Golden Globes. Last year he was presented with the Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award.
But his skills were honed on television, where he first gained widespread notice in the early 1960s as a standup comic, and during the 1950s, when he wrote for Sid Caesar and other TV stars.
His prodigious output through the decades has also included magazine essays, books and plays. A musical adaptation of his 1994 film comedy, "Bullets Over Broadway," ran on Broadway last year.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More