In April, Amazon debuted 14 pilots for shows that could become its first originals. Five of them made the cut: Alpha House, Betas, Annebots, Creative Galaxy, and Tumbleaf. They will begin production, and air later this year, and in early 2014.
“We are thrilled at the enthusiastic customer response to our first original pilots,” said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “We built Amazon Studios so that customers could help decide which stories would make the very best movies and TV shows. It’s exciting to see the process in motion, doing exactly what we set out to do. The success of this first set of pilots has given us the push to try this approach with even more shows—this is just the beginning.”
Alpha House stars John Goodman, and was written by Academy Award nominee and Pulitzer-Prize winner Garry Trudeau and produced by Elliot Webb and Jonathan Alter. It’s a comedy about “four misfit senators turned unlikely roommates”.
Betas is a comedy set in Silicon Valley, following four friends as they try to get rich with a new mobile social networking app. It stars Ed Begley Jr., Jon Daly, Joe Dinicol, Charlie Saxton and Karan Soni, and is written by Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard.
The other three are kids shows. Here are the official descriptions:
Annebots revolves around Anne, a young scientist, who creates three robot helpers to assist her scientific experiments in the back of her dad’s junkyard. This science-based series from creator J.J. Johnson aims to introduce kids to science and technology in a fun, new way.
Creative Galaxy is an animated interactive art adventure series, designed to inspire kids’ creative thinking through crafts, story, music and dance. The series was created by Angela Santomero, creator of Blue’s Clues and the Emmy-nominated literacy series, Super Why!
Tumbleaf was created by Drew Hodges and Kelli Bixler of Bix Pix Entertainment, the award-winning stop motion studio. The series, aimed at preschoolers, is set in a whimsical land where a small blue fox named Fig plays each day and discovers adventure, friendship and love around every bend. Children will be enriched by narratives that promote play through exploration and scientific thinking.
Each of the shows will appear exclusively on Prime Instant Video. The pilots are currently available for streaming.