Fox Nabs Hourlong Action Comedy From Bill Lawrence & Blake McCormick As Put Pilot

EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation with multiple networks chasing, Fox has landed Chasing Skips, an hourlong action-comedy project from Cougar Town executive producer/showrunner Blake McCormick and the series’ co-creator Bill Lawrence. Written by McCormick, Chasing Skips  centers on two down-on-their-luck guys in search of a way to improve their lives who decide to enter the world of bounty hunting, despite having no experience and very few skills. Warner Bros TV and Lawrence’s studio-based Doozer are producing, with McCormick, Lawrence and Jeff Ingold executive producing. Chasing Skips stems from a blind script deal McCormick inked with Warner Bros TV through Doozer in May in conjunction with his appointment as new showrunner of Cougar Town for its upcoming fifth season.

The setup is similar to Doozer’s script deal with Jeff Astrof, who took over Lawrence’s other TBS series, Ground Floor, as showrunner. It led to a comedy project, which landed a put pilot commitment at CBS. ICM Parners-repped Doozer’ on-air series include returning Cougar Town and upcoming Ground Floor, Surviving Jack on Fox and Undateable on NBC. McCormick, repped by UTA, Kaplan Perrone and attorney Jared Levine, had been on Cougar Town for the past three seasons, starting out as a co-producer in 2010. Prior to that, he served as a co-producer on the Fox Comedy King Of The Hill. On the feature side, McCormick’s 2012 Black List script Untitled Cops Comedy sold to Universal with American Wedding writers Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg attached to direct and produce.