Friday, July 5, 2019

Marlee Matlin to star in new Disney+ comedy series Life and Deaf

From Deadline:

Disney+ is finalizing deals to put in development comedy series Life and Deaf, starring and executive produced by Oscar winner Marlee Matlin, Deadline reports. The project hails from Switched at Birth creator Lizzy Weiss, Patricia Heaton and David Hunt’s Four Boys Entertainment and CBS TV Studios, where Four Boys is under a pod deal. 
Written By Weiss and based on the life of Jack Jason, Matlin’s long-time interpreter, Life and Deaf is a half-hour family comedy about a kid growing up in the ‘70s with deaf parents — and the mischief that ensues when, as their ears and mouthpiece, he is given the “keys to the kingdom.’ 
Heaton, Hunt and Rebecca Stay of FourBoys will executive produce along with Weiss, Matlin and Jason. CBS TV Studios is the studio.
The project reunites Matlin with Weiss, with whom she worked onSwitched at Birth. Her recent TV credits include co-starring on the third season of ABC’s Quantico, as well as roles on Syfy’s The Magiciansand Fox’s Family Guy. She’ll next be seen in Limetown for Facebook Watch. Matlin made her film debut in Children of a Lesser God, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar. 
Weiss created the Peabody-winning Switched at Birth, which ran for five seasons at ABC Family/Freeform, featuring multiple deaf actors and characters including Matlin who was recurring. She was also the showrunner for Season 1 of Facebook Watch’s Sorry For Your Loss, and wrote the surf girl movie Blue Crush. 
FourBoys Entertainment is currently in pre-production on the movie Florence, Not, Italy, which Hunt will direct, and is also producing the Heaton-led comedy series Carol’s Second Act for CBS and CBS TV Studios along with creators/EP’s Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins and Kapital Entertainment. It’s set to premiere this fall on CBS. 
At Disney+, CBS TV Studios has a series order for Diary of a Female President, from writer Ilana Peña and Gina Rodriguez’s I Can and I Will production company.