The CW is showing some edge, greenlighting production on a half-hour comedy pilot about a Muslim foreign exchange student who moves in with a Wisconsin family.
Dubbed "Aliens in America," the single-camera laffer from "Just Shoot Me" scribes Moses Port and David Guarascio will begin production in June and is in contention for a midseason slot on the CW. NBC Universal Television Studio is producing.
Project was originally set up at NBC, but the Peacock ultimately passed. CW execs see the project as a potential companion to frosh success "Everybody Hates Chris."
"Aliens" is set in Altoona, Wis., where Justin Hobgood is an awkward, lanky 16-year-old having trouble fitting in at school. His mom hears about the school's foreign exchange program and signs up her family, figuring the new arrival will give her son a hipness transplant.
Things don't go as planned, however, when the exchange student turns out to be a Pakistani Muslim who wears a
kufi on his head and a
shalwar kameez over his body.
Guarascio and Port, along with Joe Wiseman and Joe Port, are also exec producing the CBS comedy pilot "Inseparable."
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