Ilana Glazer Sets Hulu Stand-Up Special as Comedy Arms Race Heats Up
Hulu’s stand-up push continues with Ilana Glazer.
The Broad City alum will debut her second special, Human Magic, on the platform Dec. 20. The hour, which Rotten Science and Starrpix will produce and Jeff Tomsic is set to direct, was taped in early May in Toronto. It will air internationally on Disney+.
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The new hour arrives a month after Jim Gaffigan’s November special, which will kick off Hulu’s monthly stand-up initiative, which it’s dubbed “Hularious.” The platform has also lined up hours from Bill Burr, Daily Show vet Roy Wood Jr. and, pending deals, Sebastian Maniscalco, Atsuko Okatsuka and Jessica Kirson. As part of the new effort, Hulu will also launch a curated collection of licensed specials, a mix of iconic hours and recent releases.
“The mantra is very much quality over quantity,” Hulu’s head of scripted content Jordan Helman said recently of the platform’s curated approach. With only 12 a year, the Hulu team hopes to differentiate its comedy brand from Netflix’s, which debuts a new special weekly and, despite an unrivaled track record, gets criticized for being a tough place to cut through. To land recognizable names, Helman noted that Hulu is also “being really thoughtful about how to leverage relationships throughout the larger Disney ecosystem,” which includes introducing its comics to the folks at the company’s film and TV studios.
The announcement comes as several streaming platforms, including Amazon, have tried to muscle into a standup marketplace that has, in recent years, been dominated by Netflix. In fact, stand-up specials have quickly become a bright spot in an otherwise bleak entertainment landscape, with outlets like Hulu offering as much as eight-figure paydays. A slate of specials costs only a fraction of a premium scripted series, after all, and big comics tend to have loyal fanbases and are often willing to do the heavy lifting when it comes to promotion.
For Glazer, the new hour follows on the heels of her critically acclaimed film Babes, which she co-wrote and starred in earlier this spring. Around the same time, she was busy on the road, working out Human Magic in every corner of the country. In fact, Glazer did 52 shows across 48 cities. Her first special, The Planet is Burning, rolled out in early 2020 on Amazon Prime Video.
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