1. R.I.P. Bob Newhart, 1929-2024. Never forget that Newhart had the first #1 Billboard charting comedy album with The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart. Honestly, can’t remember the last time that happened since then.
2. Noms for this year’s Primetime Emmys were announced this week, which saw Ryan Gosling get nominated for breaking a bunch of times on SNL and The Bear getting a record number of nominations as a comedy with almost no comedy in it (don’t get it twisted– it’s a brilliant, astounding, paradigm shifting sort of show). Thank goodness What We Do in the Shadows got nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series. Their honors are long overdue.
OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES NOMINEES:
Abbott Elementary
The Bear
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Hacks
Only Murders in the Building
Palm Royale
Reservation Dogs
What We Do in the Shadows
Full list of Emmy noms here.
3. Hulu, alongside Amazon, is gunning for Netflix’s big comedy fish, which, this week, includes Bill Burr and Roy Wood Jr. At one time, getting an HBO special was the gold standard for comedians, then it shifted to a Netflix special. The time for some new standard might be nigh.
4. Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson (who we hope you would have seen in Under the Skin) take a different approach to facing off in A Different Man, the latest dark comedy from A24 and director Aaron Schimberg. This very well could be a hallmark episode of The Twilight Zone, but with what seems like a hilariously satirical twist. Please enjoy the trailer for A Different Man here, then look for it in limited release this Fall.
5. Inside Out 2, at $1.37 billion in global box office, is now the second highest grossing animated film of all time (Collider) only to The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Don’t be surprised if it gets #1 and if Disney Pixar has to figure out how to do sequels that cover Riley’s college and early twenties.
6. Oof, what a time for Tenacious D to cancel a tour and put all creative endeavors on hold because Kyle Gass said “Don’t miss next time,” referring to the recent assassination attempt of Donald Trump, during a concert. It almost seems like they will actually have to legitimately come up with the greatest song in the world to fix this mess.
7. Rachel Bloom‘s high concept comedy special, “Death, Let Me Do My Special” is going to find it’s way to Netflix (Variety). It’s kind of criminal that Bloom has gone this long without top billing after Crazy Ex-Girlfriend went off the air.
8. Star Wars, one of the most popular franchises of all time, went anime and now it’s Rick and Morty, one of the most popular animated franchises in the 21st century. Thursdays at midnight, starting on Aug. 15th, Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith will be a bit more stylistically animated and probably even zanier with this anime bent to the series from Takashi Sano. Adult Swim will be airing both English and Japanese language versions. Take a gander at the trailer here.
9. Futurama just keeps Futurama-ing (perfectly skewering the present time thousands of years in the future) and we like it that way. Peep the trailer for season 12 here, due out July 29th on Hulu.
10. The one and only Margaret Cho has just been bestowed the Vanguard Artist-in-Residence at Joe’s Pub that will allow her to handpick and personally curate a fair chunk of programming at one of NYC and NYC comedy’s most cherished stages (THR). Maybe this’ll lead to Cho opening up her own venue at some point?
11. There’s quite a bit major reshuffling in LA comedy theaters over the last couple of weeks. The Ledge Theatre in LA is coming to a close at the end of this month with The Pack Theater relocating from The Broadwater in Hollywood to their current space in Los Feliz. There’s a lot of dust to be pardoned here, but make sure to go support the Ledge while you still can and patronize the Pack when it gets up and running just a few doors down from The Clubhouse.
12. Variety announced it’s first Comics to Watch line-up that would have to forego a victory lap at JFL Montreal. Hats off to this year’s picks Asif Ali, Ralph Barbosa, Jackie Fabulous, Rachel Feinstein, Tina Friml, Troy Iwata, Preacher Lawson, Leslie Liao, Nathan Macintosh, and Saul Trujillo, all comics that you have probably seen on TV more than a few times already or come up endlessly in one of your social media feeds.
13. Those missing Darcy C’Arden and Will Forte on the reg, fret not, as they will be the stars of a dramedy following a tanning business gone out-of-control called Sunny Nights (Deadline). One tiny detail is that it’ll be streaming on Aussie streamer, Stan, so, umm, you’re going to have to find a way to get access to that.
14. Jennifer Lawrence is staying in the comedy lane with Why Don’t You Love Me? (Indiewire). It’ll be from A24, so, as a comedy, you can count on reality probably being bent in some way shape or form (and we’re here for it).
15. Upcoming Tubi comedy series, Z-Suite (has nothing to do with zombies unfortunately), possibly sounds like a PG-rated update of The Lord of the Flies (Deadline) with Gen-Z’ers suddenly in charge at a NYC ad agency.
16. We’ll leave you with this: Mr. Show might play differently with Jay Johnston with being a Jan. 6th insurrectionist.