Big Men Lands At NBC, Bridesmaids' Chris O'Dowd To Write The Script For The Comedy

Melissa McCarthy wasn’t the only actor whose career received a much deserved boost in exposure due to the success of Bridesmaids. Chris O’Dowd also benefited from the film. The Irish actor was already doing fairly well over in the U.K., but it looks like we’ll be seeing more from him on this side of the pond. Among his upcoming projects is a script commitment for a comedy pilot for NBC.

While we should be seeing O’Dowd in Judd Apatow’s upcoming film This is 40, and alongside Sons of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman in Frankie Go Boom, the small screen project he’s involved in will put him behind the camera. According to Deadline, after a bidding war between all four of the major networks, NBC secured a script commitment for Big Men, a comedy from O’Dowd, along with writer-producers Joe Port and Joe Wiseman. Big Men is said to be a single-camera comedy that follows a group of men who meet at a weight-loss clinic.

As Deadline notes, NBC is as good a place as any for a pilot like this, being the home to The Biggest Loser, although CBS might have also been fitting, given that the network plays host to Mike & Molly, another comedy that follows overweight characters (and would bring O’Dowd to the same network as Bridesmaids co-star Melissa McCarthy). Regardless, NBC is where we’ll find this show, should the pilot go to series.

O’Dowd’s writing credits are minimal, but he has had success as an actor, starring in the UK’s popular comedy The IT Crowd and numerous other TV roles.