Netflix Picks Up Weekly Live Variety Talk Show Hosted by John Mulaney
John Mulaney is returning to Netflix for a new live variety talk show.
Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria announced the pickup at the Bloomberg Screentime conference Thursday, saying that the streaming service is hoping to build off John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA, the talk show concept Mulaney hosted for the service earlier this year.
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The weekly show will launch in early 2025, with Mulaney also working as executive producer and co-showrunner. Specific details are still under wraps.
“We have a long relationship with John, and we have done the stand up specials, and during Netflix Is a Joke Festival this year, he did a live talk show called Everybody’s in LA,” Bejaria said. “I was there at a couple of the tapings, and it was so bold and original and fresh and unprecedented, unpredictable. And I think it’ll be really fun to get to do a live show with him.”
She framed Everybody’s In LA as an experiment so that “if we built a weekly live talk show variety, what does that look like?”
Now Mulaney will do just that with his unnamed series.
The new show will be the biggest push yet by Netflix into what has been a traditionally difficult nut to crack in streaming: The late night variety show. Bajaria framed the new show as a “bold” bet on the space, and that the company did not want to “play it safe” because previous formats haven’t clicked.
“I think we have to continue to be bold and take risks and swings,” Bejaria said. “And I think it would be too easy and too safe to go, oh, well, you know talk hasn’t worked, so let’s not try this next thing. So I’m excited about pushing into another area.”
Mulaney’s new Netflix series comes as broadcast TV’s late night continues to downsize, as shows move to airing new episodes less frequently, and with line items like house bands being cut in the name of cost savings.
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