After bucking Hollywood tradition on the feature side, actor-filmmaker Tyler Perry is preparing to do the same in television.
Perry, whose comedy Madea's Family Reunion opened at No. 1 at the box office last weekend to make $30 million, has signed a deal with independent firm Debmar-Mercury to distribute his original comedy series House of Payne in first-run syndication.
The half-hour series revolves around the comical situations that ensue when a multigenerational family lives under one roof. Perry is serving as director, executive-producer, and one of the writers on Payne, but will not star in the show. It's understood that he might make guest appearances at some point, however.
He chose to partner with Debmar-Mercury rather than go through a studio or network in order to retain creative control while building his brand, which also includes the film Diary of a Mad Black Woman, such plays as I Know I've Been Changed and I Can Do Bad All By Myself, and a home-video business, said his agent, Charles King at William Morris.
"Tyler has had creative control and freedom over everything he's done," King said. "We believe this is truly going to be groundbreaking and break the mold in television."
Nonetheless, taking the syndication route with a half-hour scripted series is a big gamble, given the dearth of original scripted series, drama or comedy, in the first-run-syndication marketplace these days. The lack of uniform time-period clearances for shows sold in first-run syndication makes it more difficult to mount national marketing and promotional campaigns for a show, especially in today's fragmented television landscape. Among the last comedies to take a stab at first-run syndication were the 1991-93 revival of WKRP in Cincinnati and Harry and the Hendersons, which ran from 1990-93.
However, Perry has developed an extremely loyal following, particularly among black audiences, after years of touring the country starring in regional theater productions that he also wrote and produced. Last year, Perry surprised Hollywood naysayers with the strong opening for his partly self-financed feature Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which was distributed by Lionsgate, as is Family Reunion.
Debmar-Mercury is making the first 10 episodes of Payne available to stations in select markets for spring/summer as part of a test run, with additional episodes available for national distribution in fall 2007.
"The test being done is, in effect, our version of a pilot," said Debmar-Mercury copresident Mort Marcus. "The difference is that...instead of doing a pilot and having 22 executives sit around and decide to say yes or not, we're letting the consumers decide... We're trusting that Tyler has his pulse on an audience that is underserved."
Marcus and fellow copresident Ira Bernstein said they are talking to a "cross section" of station groups, likely selecting one or two from each to take part in the test run. They said they are looking to choose stations that represent a number of groups, including Fox, Tribune, Viacom, and Sinclair, and that they will likely be stations affiliated with Fox, UPN, or WB Network.
Bernstein added that response to Payne has been "pretty incredible" for a couple of reasons.
"First, in general, because of the dearth of sitcoms that everybody has written and talked about, and second, because this is something that puts the bat in [the stations'] hands a little bit," he said. "We'll work together with them...and they'll be part of the process of scheduling it, the on-air test...the whole process."
Marcus and Bernstein added that the deal has been in the works for six months or so--long before the announcement from CBS Corp. and Warner Bros. that UPN and WB Network would fold in the fall to form one single network dubbed the CW, leaving numerous newly independent stations scrambling to find programming.
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