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Bowman inks deal with 20th, gets back to basics on Earl
by Jane Boursaw, posted May 20th 2008 9:40AM
Bobby Bowman is continuing his monogamous relationship with 20th Century Fox TV. The My Name is Earl executive producer has inked a new two-year deal with the studio. Bowman will continue on Earl, where he manages the writing staff and oversees the writer's room, serving as executive producer with creator Greg Garcia and director Marc Buckland. He'll also develop new projects for the studio.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, it's a seven-figure deal (so if my math is right, it's at least one million, but less than 10 million).
Bowman has spent the past eight years at 20th TV, working on Family Guy, Yes, Dear, and Earl. He describes his relationship with the studio as "monogamous," saying, "They do exciting shows and have great executives. Sure, I would prefer it if 20th were monogamous in return, and didn't feel the need to have multiple partners. But they're not going to change."
It's kind of funny to hear a TV exec talk about his job like it's a marriage, but that's exactly what it is. Plus, in Hollywood, most working relationships last far longer than most marriages, so there's that.
But it does make me think that Earl's days are numbered. And is it just me, or has the show been going downhill the past couple of years? They kind of lost me with the whole 'Earl in Jail' thing.
It sounds like Bowman might be thinking that, too. In his Live Blog last Thursday, he wrote, "What we actually have planned is very back to basics, straight up, stand alone story, list-of-the-week kind of thing. It's going to be old school Earl, just like the original. The story telling, the resolutions, will be more self-contained, whereas before we were doing a lot more cliff hangers. And so we're looking at a lot of stuff from the first season and bringing over the style of story telling that we were doing back then."
Still, sounds like he's hedging his bets with some other projects.
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