Amazon Studios greenlights its first 6 pilot episodes, to be available for free on Instant Video

Amazon’s media production arm, Amazon Studios has today announced that it will produce pilots for six original comedy series from a mixture of established names and fresh talent.

The pilots pilots will be posted on Amazon Instant Video for Amazon customers to watch for free, with viewer feedback helping to decide determine which ones go into production as series.

The six pilots :

• Alpha House, written by Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury fame, about four senators who live together in a rented house in Washington DC.
• Browsers, written by 12-time Emmy-winning comedy writer David Javerbaum: “A musical comedy set in contemporary Manhattan that follows four young people as they start their first jobs at a news website.” This one was reported to be close to a pilot recently.
• Dark Minions: Written by Big Bang Theory co-stars Kevin Sussman and John Ross Bowie. “An animated workplace series about two slackers just trying to make a paycheck working an intergalactic warship.”
• The Onion Presents: The News: “A smart, fast-paced scripted comedy set behind the scenes of The Onion News Network”
• Supanatural: “An animated comedy series about two outspoken divas who are humanity’s last line of defense against the supernatural, when they’re not working at the mall.”
• Those Who Can’t: “A comedy about three juvenile, misfit teachers who are just as immature, if not more so, than the students they teach.”

Amazon says that since its launch in November 2010, it has seen more than 12,000 movie scripts and 2,000 series pilot scripts submitted.

Any series that go into production will be made exclusively available for free to Amazon Prime members through the company’s Prime Instant Video and LoveFilm services.

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Amazon Studios is one of a number of initiatives within the industry that have seen technology companies getting into content production (Hulu and Netflix are also at it) in order to reduce their reliance on traditional media companies. Amazon has been busy optioning various series for a while, but these are the first to go into production.

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