“Backstrom” is the Rainn Wilson pilot that circled other networks and Reilly picked it up. “I think it’s another great a**hole protagonist for Fox,” explained Reilly. “It’s an outrageous character with Rainn as the perfect unconventional kind of guy. One of the hardest nuts to crack is an episodic show like ‘House’ or a ‘Bones’ that the audience can invest into and it’s not highly serialized, but [it] just has a voice and a character at the center. Listen, I look at all of the competing pilots. Frankly they wanted to pick it up. It was over a business disagreement. I said the second I watched it, “if they blink, we’re in.”
“Hieroglyph,” Ben Affleck and Glenn Gordon Caron’s “The Middle Man,” the John Mulaney sitcom, “Cabot College” from Tina Fey, Robert Carlock and Matt Hubbard and “Fatric” directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash are also on Reilly’s new slate. He also has a comedy development deal with The Lonely Island to develop series for “over the top pilots that will seed in the digital world and grow into series on Fox, FXX or others.”
This new approach to pilot season also means Fox can start production on “Sleepy Hollow” season two this March. “We will be months ahead of everyone else,” related Reilly.
With pilot season gearing up, Reilly wanted to get his message out to the media first. “Because we’re in the middle of pilot season right now and I think there’s going to be a lot of conjecture and guessing about what we’re doing,” he said after the session. “I sort of want to get out in front of that and just say here’s what’s going down. Here’s what’s happening at Fox and I’m just institutionalizing it. Everybody else can do what they want, but I wanted to try to minimize the confusion of it all.”
Reilly began his executive career as president of FX and feels he can bring the cable approach to network. “Ultimately we’re going to be producing more, not less. We’ve upped our series quotient last year. It’s really about at the end of the day what gets on the air and what’s real. I will be producing as many projects as I normally would. Listen, I’m not going to produce busted pilots. Our ratio will be closer. Here’s what they do in cable, here’s what I did in cable, what I started in cable [is] to call a spade a spade. You order a pilot with the intention of making that series. You don’t throw 10 at the wall and hope that you come up with one. If it doesn’t turn out, if you have a problem, you don’t have to proceed. But you’re trying to make it a 1:1 ratio about something you’re invested in and care about.”
For a few more updates on Fox series, Reilly feels good about “Almost Human.” “That’s another crazy delivery pattern situation, holidays and sports interruptions. It’s been pretty challenging on that, but I think the show is in a pretty good groove right now and actually I really love our leads. I think there’s a show there and I look at the cum on the DVR as pretty encouraging. That’s going to be an interesting discussion.”
“Bones” could be back for one more year. “We’re negotiating on ‘Bones’ for another season. I anticipate it will be back. We’ve got to make a business deal. Stephen Nathan will be running that show. He’s been working with Hart [Hanson] since the beginning. Hart is focused on ‘Backstrom.’ I would anticipate that would be their final season.”
I brought up the new “Terminator” series being developed in conjunction with the new movies. Reilly sincerely had not heard that, so when I asked if Fox would have a stake since they aired “The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” he was blunt. There’s no stake, and “I would have no interest in that.”
Lastly, in the after session follow-ups, I asked Reilly about the death and resurrection of Brian on “Family Guy.” Frankly I loved it. I just thought it was a great idea and I love the fact that it just shows you how people care. I forgot because we hatched that 16 months before it ever hit the air. Frankly I forgot about it. I went to get my haircut on a Saturday and I walk in and I hear two people in the chair behind me going, ‘Can you believe they killed Brian? What do you mean they killed him? Yeah, he’s gone from the show.’ The entire place started talking about it. It’s really what’s great about television. Then finally I was like okay, I love that you care, but come on, people. You really think he’s dead?”
To be clear, it was not Reilly’s mandate that Brian live. It was Seth MacFarlane’s idea all along. “It really came out of a direct conversation between me and Seth. I said I just think we need to do something crazy. He had a couple of ideas he wanted to do. I said, ‘I don’t know whether it’s a new character or we get rid of a character.’ He said, ‘I’ve got this thing I’ve been thinking about. What if we killed Brian?’ I said do it, goodbye.”
