HBO Adapting ‘Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’ Novel As Comedy Series From Plan B

HBO has put in development Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a comedy project based on David Shafer’s darkly comedic debut novel, with Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment executive producing. Chuck alum Zev Borow will write and executive produce the adaptation, a half-hour comedy about three young adults grappling with the usual thirtysomething problems – boredom, authenticity, and omnipotent online oligarchy. Shafer will serve as a co-executive producer.

Published last year, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot landed on a number of 2014 Best Books list, including those from Time magazine and NPR.

Borow, repped by UTA and Morris Yorn, is a writer/supervising producer on the Amazon series Mad Dogs and previously wrote and executive produced USA Network’s comedy pilot Love Is Dead. Additionally, he is a journalist who’s written for Mcsweeneys, The New Yorker, GQ and Esquire.

Shafer, repped by UTA on behalf of Fletcher & Co., also comes from a journalism background having graduated from Harvard and the Columbia Journalism School. He has lived in Argentina and Dublin, and has worked a journalist, a carpenter, a taxi driver, and briefly a communications specialist for an NGO.

CAA-repped Plan B has a long relationship with HBO, most recently executive producing HBO Films’ Nightingale starring David Oyelowo, which premiered last Friday.