I don’t know how often you guys sit around considering who the most popular screenwriting/directing duo in Hollywood is, but if that is indeed how you spend some of your waking hours, you’ll probably agree that the Academy Award-winning pair of Nax Faxon and Jim Rash are in the conversation, especially with their co-directorial debut The Way, Way Back currently winning audiences over. Faxon and Rash, no strangers to television acting, are bringing their directing to the small screen, according to Deadline, where they’ll team up with Don’t Trust the B---- At Apt. 23 creator Nahnatchka Khan to create the comedy pilot Fatrick. Three highly qualified comedic minds coming together for one show will either be genius or disastrous, but I’m betting on the former.
The pilot was first pitched to Fox, who took no time in snatching it up with a full pilot production commitment. The pilot is being written by Kahn and Corey Nickerson, who served as executive producer on Don’t Trust the B----, and Faxon and Rash will direct.
I’ll give you two guesses what self-image issue a project called Fatrick will deal with. Patrick is a thirtysomething-year-old guy who appears to have everything going for him, from his good looks to his style to his good luck with the opposite sex. But that’s all on the outside. Inside, he’s still just the same insecure 10-year-old fat kid trying to keep his head above socially awkward waters, and it’s keeping him back from where he feels his life should be. They really need to nail whoever the lead actor is, because that particular type of arrested development might get old in a nation that flip flops between health awareness and food competitions.
While Rash is probably best known on camera for NBC’s Community, Faxon made a home for himself at Fox last year as one of the titular characters in the cancelled sitcom Ben and Kate, which I thought was one of the stronger freshman series of the season. I guess there aren’t any hard feelings between them, however. The two really broke through on the feature front with their screenplay for Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, for which they snagged the Oscar. I haven’t seen their latest film yet, so I can’t speak for their directing skills, but I can’t imagine what their vision will be like without having written the words behind it.
Fox and Nahnatchka are also on good terms, as she spent seven years working on American Dad as a writer and executive producer, following a writer/producer gig at Nickelodeon’s Unfabulous. The recently cancelled Don’t Trust the B---- was originally supposed to be a Fox show, though it ended up spending both of its seasons on ABC.
Should the terribly named Fatrick come to fruition, Fox is aiming for it to air during the 2014-2015 season, which leaves plenty of time for all three of these writers to get other projects out of the way.
