TV Show Development Quotes

I did a pilot for HBO, called One Percent, that they didn't end up picking up, but it was a pretty intense and dramatic piece.

I got into television, and I'm a television guy, so I've never really had a movie career.

I'm just ah, actually developing a tv show for HBO, and I'm directing a film this summer, and actually I'm doing some live shows out in western Canada.

I think Rick Berman just called me and asked me if I wanted to do the show [Star Trek: Enterprise], and he said they'd write an arc if I'd do it.

All of a sudden Mindy [Kaling] was writing on The Office and had sold a TV show. When we'd try to write shows, we'd jokingly call the word documents "Hit Show." We just couldn't crack the code.

The writers have slowly taken the show, with subjects other gay shows have dived right into, slowly. It was over a year before Will even started to date.

Some of the stuff I get the scripts for, I read it and I'm like, "Wow." We're doing some crazy stuff on this show [Legends of Tommorow]. it's going to be amazing.

And so out of the blue the call did come and said, you know, "Would you be - would you consider turning this [The Starter Wife] now into a series?" And so obviously that was a shock. And all the conversations began. And, you know, and now we're here. Now we're finishing up our last episode right now.

"30 Rock" is over, so I definitely aspire to write another movie again; eventually, will try to pitch something for television again.

I made a point to not read too far ahead with the first six or seven episodes of any show. I would read the outlines, but I didn't really want to read scripts too far in advance because I didn't really want to get ahead of myself, at all. To be honest, I don't have the time to come up with theories.

I do want to do TV, but I'm looking to be a creator, writer, and producer, and perhaps I could be a recurring character. Do 10 shows a year, something like that.

You hope for that with anything, but with a TV show, the writer and the actor being the right mix are more important than the actual writing of the pilot because you hope it's something that can have a long life.

And that's what happened to that show. It started ordinary, it started really rather bad. As I said, there was a review that said, really, we think the commercials are better than the show. And then it gradually developed.

I'd done a pilot [of Townies] with Caroline Rhea [Pride & Joy] that didn't go anywhere.

'Allen Gregory' came about because we wanted an animated show and we were just tossing around some ideas about me playing a 7-year-old. We thought that would be cool, because we couldn't do that in real life.

I've always said that it's like being the winner of three separate lottery tickets - getting a pilot, getting the pilot picked up, and having a show that actually lasts.

My take on 'Lucifer' was pretty much laid down by Tom Kapinos when he wrote the original pilot script for it. I remember reading it for the first time, and I was about four or five pages in, thinking this is so funny, and I know how I would want to do this if I was going to do it.

Getting into network television was tougher than I thought it was gonna be.

I think that by now, in the very beginning when I first joined the show, General Landry was like a new kid in school. I was coming into a situation I didn't really know much about, and now, after a couple of years, the character's kind of mellowed and gotten comfortable working at the command center and very comfortable with his troops. What they always do with these shows is they always leave them open-ended. The SG-1 franchise has been so successful for the network, that they always want to keep it open, an option to do it again in some way, whether that's a movie or a series, or whatever.

I have a million story-lines for 'Revenge' and they never listen to me.

When 'Dare Me' was first in development, it was hard to make the case for why it'd be interesting to anybody other than teenage girls. It'd often be treated, like, on first glance, 'What is this? 'Pretty Little Liars?' 'Mean Girls?'' It never was that.

Things maybe take longer usually when it comes to TV - especially network TV. There are usually multiple levels that you have to go through in terms of the casting director, the producers, the studio, the network, reading with other people.

We couldn't get it off the ground as a film, but then we begin to think television, and Lowell pushed it out there and Jim and Nick were anxious to do Hap and Leonard anyway, and I had worked with them before, so it was a perfect story. I love the series. I hope there's a second.

I believe really deeply in the pilot process because you learn things about tone and casting.

Working in television, many times you read a script, you work on the pilot, and then you play the waiting game to see if you're able to make it a series.