Ben Stiller & Helen Childress To Revive ‘Reality Bites’ As Comedy Series For NBC

Reality Bites, the cult 1994 romantic comedy that examined the angst of Generation X college graduates, is heading to primetime. The film’s director Ben Stiller and writer Helen Childress have teamed for a TV series version of the movie that starred Winona Ryder, Stiller and Ethan Hawke. Childress will write the single-camera comedy project, which is set up at NBC. It centers on recent college graduate Lelaina Pierce, the character played in the movie by Ryder, as she struggles to make her way — romantically and professionally — in the recession-plagued, pre-Internet early 1990s. Set in Houston, the show, and Lelaina herself with her video camera, chronicles the lives of her “slacker” friends with whom she shares an apartment. The series is produced by Universal Television, sibling to the film’s producer Universal Pictures. Co-producing with Uni TV are Stiller’s Red Hour Television and Double Feature Films, the company run by Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, who were producers on the 1994 film. Red Hours’ Stiller, Debbie Liebling, and Stuart Cornfeld executive produce with Childress, Shamberg and Sher. WME-repped Red Hour has a pilot, Big Time In Hollywood, FL, and stand-up comedy series, The Meltdown With Jonah And Kumail, at Comedy Central and sketch comedy series The Birthday Boys at IFC. Childress, repped by Original Artists, has feature horror project The Mountain at Fox and Red Hour with Stiller attached to direct, she is penning a feature adaptation of kids book The Snowy Day, also for Fox and Red Hour, and recently re-wrote The Drowning for Fox.