Nahnatchka Khan Immigrant Family Comedy With Jake Kasdan Lands At ABC As Put Pilot

EXCLUSIVE: Don’t Trust The B—- creator Nahnatchka Khan is back at ABC with a new single-camera comedy. The network has handed a put pilot commitment to Fresh Off The Boat, which Khan is writing/executive producing. Jake Kasdan also is exec producing the project, which hails from 20th Century Fox TV, where both Khan and Kasdan are based. Based on Eddie Huang’s memoir, Fresh Off The Boat is set in the ’90s and revolves around a Chinese family that moves to Orlando. (Huang’s real-life family is Taiwanese.) This is a setup Khan can relate to as she too is a first-generation American whose parents were “fresh off the boat.” Kasdan’s producing partner Melvin Mar also exec produces the project, while restaurateur/TV personality Huang serves as producer.

The deal comes 10 days after another half-hour project from Khan, which has Nat Faxon and Jim Rash attached to direct/exec produce, was bought pre-emptively by Fox with a pilot production commitment. That created a competitive situation for Fresh off The Boat among the other broadcast networks, which wanted to be in business with Khan. ABC programming chief Paul Lee had been a vocal supporter Don’t Trust The B—-, calling the decision to cancel the show a particularly difficult one. Before creating Don’t Trust The B—-, WME-repped Khan worked on American Dad! for seven years. Like Khan, WME-repped Kasdan too has another single-camera comedy with a pilot production commitment at Fox that also isbased on a memoir, Cindy Chupack’s adaptation of her book The Longest Date.