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Variety has selected its 10 Comics to Watch for 2020.

This year’s honorees will be profiled in the September 29 issue of Variety and take part in a live virtual panel at this year’s Just for Laughs Digital Festival. Traditionally held every year in Montreal, the festival will going digital this year due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and held Oct. 9-10. The 10 Comics to Watch panel will be presented by Cohen Gardner Llp.

Says Paul Ronca, senior director of creative development & brand partnerships, Just for Laughs: “The Variety 10 Comics to Watch have been a revered part of the Just for Laughs festival for many years. It’s great to see the unveiling of a talented new group of amazing comics and creators that will be participating in the first ever Just for Laughs Digital Festival. Lots of things have changed since the start of 2020, but the spirit of creating entertaining...

Warm Bodies helmer Jonathan Levine is set to direct all eight episodes of Hulu’s anticipated tentpole limited series Nine Perfect Strangers, starring Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy, Samara Weaving, Luke Evans, Melvin Gregg, Grace Van Patten and Tiffany Boone. Levine also will executive produce the series, based on Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty’s book. The project hails from David E. Kelley, Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories, Kidman’s Blossom Films and Endeavor Content.

Co-written by Kelley, John Henry Butterworth and Samantha Strauss and co-showrun by Kelley and Butterworth, Nine Perfect Strangers takes place at a boutique health-and-wellness resort that promises healing and transformation as nine stressed city dwellers try to get on a path to a better way of living. Watching over them during this 10-day retreat is the resort’s director Masha (Kidman), a woman on a mission to reinvigorate their tired minds and bodies.

Levine will executive produce alongside Papandrea,...

Tom Allen & Jt Parr, the pair behind viral comedy Chad Goes Deep, have teamed up with The Mick creators John & Dave Chernin to develop an animated comedy for Hulu.

The streamer has handed the Untitled Parr & Allen Animated Project a script and visual development commitment. 20th Century Fox Television, which produces animated series Solar Opposites for Hulu, is the studio.

The show follows two perpetually stoked surfer bros born ahead of their time try to navigate teenage life in Ancient Greece while showing their Greek God dads that there is more than one way to be a legend.

Allen and Parr, who went viral last week with their YouTube video of handing out masks in Huntingdon Beach, are writing and exec producing. The Chernin brothers, who got their start on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, are showrunners and exec producers. Nicholas Frenkel, Luke Dillon, Luke Maxwell (3Arts) and Trevor Rotenberg also exec produce.

Tom Allen and Jt Parr, the comedians behind the popular surfer bro personality, podcast and web series called “Chad Goes Deep,” are developing an animated series at Hulu.

The as yet untitled project sees the duo team with “The Mick” creators John and Dave Chernin, who will serve as showrunners and executive producers.

The prospective series centers around two perpetually stoked surfer bros born ahead of their time, who try to navigate teenage life in Ancient Greece while showing their Greek God dads that there is more than one way to be a legend.

Allen, Parr and the other creators have been handed a script plus visual development deal by Hulu.

“We’ve been fans of Chad and Jt for a long time. Their desire to better the world through comedy is genuinely inspiring and we’re frothed to shred this wave with them,” said the Chernins in a statement.