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Ricky Gervais Going Back to HBO
18-May-2009
Written by: John Winn
Network set to premiere animated show based on his podcasts.
According to Daily Variety, Ricky Gervais of Extras fame is due to come back to HBO, the network that hosted Extras, but this time he's going to be more . . . animated.
The Ricky Gervais Show, a half-hour animated series based on the podcasts of Gervais, producer Stephen Merchant and eccentric radio producer Karl Pilkington, will air sometime in 2010. The show is being produced by Media Rights Capital in concert with animation house Wildbrain. Wildbrain also produced Yo Gabba Gabba! for Nickelodeon Kids.
Gervais, Merchant, and Pilkington will act as executive producers. Wildbrain's Craig Kellman will direct.
"They find him to be the funniest person in the world," said MRC's Modi Wiczyk. "Ricky says Karl is like crack to him."
According to Gervais and Merchant, "Karl is a man who believes a sea lion is a cross between a fish and a dog. Hopefully, Karl will enter the pantheon of animated greats."
The Ricky Gervais Show started as a radio program in London. In 2005, Gervais and Merchant turned the show into a podcast, bringing along Pilkington. In 2007, the podcasts became one of the most downloaded on the Internet, earning it a Guinness World Record.
Fans even began to animate clips from the show themselves, leading to the idea of a half-hour animated program.
"It's such a natural for animation," Wildbrain Development VP Lisa Ullmann said. "We worked closely with Gervais figuring out how we wanted him to look, as well as Stephen and Karl."
The Ricky Gervais Show is the second animated series that MRC has produced for HBO. In 2008, the company delivered The Life and Times of Tim to HBO, the first animated series for the network since Todd McFarlane's Spawn, which ran from 1997 to 1999.
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